Alternative ways for finding and obtaining journal articles
Library catalogues and databases are not the only access points for literature research.
Search engines like Google Scholar may provide useful results as well. But especially these results often lead to paid content. Offers by online publishers, which are licensed by the University Library Bayreuth, are accessible on campus or via VPN and proxy from off campus.
The full text (PDF etc.) of an article is not available? When you search in a database and you cannot access the full text, you can use the SFX Button to check whether access is possible via another platform or to order the article directly via interlibrary loan.
In case, this is not possible, there are other possibilities to obtain the requested article:
Find online versions of articles which are free of charge.
- Unpaywall is an add-on that is free of charge and indicates if there are any open access versions of an article by using DOI. This add-on is available for Firefox and Google Chrome.
- Open-Access-Button checks whether there are any freely available versions of articles (based on DOI) on the internet and passes a request for the article on to the author if desired. The web application is also available for Google Chrome as an add-on. A one-time registration with email address is necessary.
- Please see our website for more information about open access.
Use printed versions.
- Check the Library Catalogue, whether the publication which contains the requested article is part of our collection. If it is, you can scan it or make copies. Please observe the applicable copyright laws*.
- Publications neither available from Bayreuth University Library in printed nor in electronic form can be ordered via interlibrary loan. You will receive the requested article as a paper copy for you to keep.
Use academic networks and personal contacts.
- Try to contact the author directly, e.g. by using social media for academics (XING, LinkedIn, Mendeley, Academia.edu, ResearchGate).
- You would like to share an article which has been published with Springer Nature and to which you have access via the University Library. The service SharedIt enables you to provide reading access to the article. Access via a SharedIt link is conditionally for access. This link appears after ticking the box “Share article” in the full text view of the article on the right side. Downloading or printing is not possible.
Ask a librarian.
The team of the information desk in the Main Library is happy to assist you in obtaining articles.Use fee-based delivery services.
Apart from free of charge document delivery services, there are many commercial offers from libraries and publishers:- TIB document delivery: The TIB-Portal provides a central access point for scientific-technological specialist and research information. As a follow-up of your research in the portal you can order the requested publication for a fee as a registrated TIB customer. The publications are delivered worldwide.
- Subito: Subito is a fee-based document delivery service by scientific libraries in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and China. Before your first order you have to register.
- DeepDyve: This platform provides a kind of „All you can read” service for journal articles in return for a monthly or annual payment.
Provide your own publication open access.
- Support other researchers worldwide by facilitating access to your research results. Choose open access journals for your publications (further information on our website) or use EPub Bayreuth, the institutional repository of the University of Bayreuth.
- Furthermore, you might have the option to publish your work again as an open access document. The right to publish a post-print version* enables you under certain conditions* to provide other researchers with your work on EPub Bayreuth or on your private homepage.