Library Search: First, conduct a library search to discover what options Purdue Libraries offers for access or delivery of your needed article (including Open Access, if available. Faculty, staff, and student researchers can also search for open access copies using indexes/repositories like Google Scholar, PubMed Central, SHARE, arXiv, and SSRN to locate resources beyond Purdue’s collections.)
Interlibrary Loan: Our streamlined Interlibrary Loan service will be your go-to source for many cancelled titles. By using ILL, you will still be able to access the articles you need when you need them, but they may be sourced from collections outside Purdue. Regardless of where your requested materials originate, we are committed to ensuring that you receive them in a timely manner, be it in print or electronic form. Reaching out to your liaison librarian when you need to source hard-to-find resources is also essential. Our liaison librarians are here to help you!
Article Express: West Lafayette campus faculty, staff, and graduate students have an additional interlibrary loan service available to request articles not included in the new contract. This service provides almost immediate (within 2 hours) email delivery of articles from eligible journal content and can be requested straight from Library Search. Each PDF requested through Article Express will be paid for by the Libraries at an average cost of $25 per article. When you search for an article through our webpage, you will see Article Express listed in the options if it is available.
Other Alternative Access Tools: Here are some of the powerful new tools that can make your literature research process easier and more productive.
Unpaywall: A service that provides an open and legal database of millions of free scholarly articles, harvested from over 50,000 publishers and institutional repositories. Unpaywall also has a Chrome/Firefox browser extension that will point you to open access versions of any articles you may be seeking either on a publisher website or in a tool like PubMed or Web of Science. Read more about Unpaywall and its integration with UC-eLinks and Web of Science.
Open Access Button (OA Button): A site that serves the same function as Unpaywall and allows you to plug in an article’s URL, DOI, title, or other information to find free and legal open access versions. OA Button also offers Chrome and Firefox extensions. Clicking on the extension button from a paywalled article initiates a search for that article and, where available, instantly delivers free access. When free access is not found, OA Button can contact the corresponding author directly to help them make a self-archived version available.
Endnote Click (formerly Kopernio): A Chrome/Firefox browser plug-in from Clarivate Analytics that offers free access to over 20,000 open access sources, as well as providing access via Purdue institutional subscriptions.
Open access repositories: A nearly limitless number of repositories host open access content, including: HathiTrust, Project Gutenberg, Directory of Open Access Books, Directory of Open Access Journals, OpenLibrary, Digital Public Library of America, and PubMed Central.
Preprints: Scholarly articles publicly shared before peer review and publication in a journal are another source of research literature. Preprints are available in institutional repositories like eScholarship and also by discipline: arXiv, bioRxiv, CogPrints, OSF Preprints, e-LIS, Social Science Research Network, and EconLit.
DOAR: The Directory of Open Access Repositories helps you find academic institutional repositories of open working papers, theses and dissertations, books and journals.
Contact the author: If all else fails and you still cannot get access to a full text article you need, contact the author directly and ask if they can send you a copy. Twitter is a great place to start! Academia.edu, too!