Linking to full-text articles and e-books

• Electronic Books
• Articles

If you have difficulty following these instructions, please contact your subject librarian.

Electronic Books

To access an electronic book in the Library Network’s collection, first locate it in our catalogue.

When you have located the correct item, view the item’s full record and locate the "link to this record" URL. This is the permanent link to the record in the Library’s catalogue. From this record, users may connect to the fulltext of an available e-book.

E-books provided by various vendors may offer different use conditions for the item. Based on licensing limitations, an e-book may be restricted to being used by a single user at a time.

If you are unable to locate a specific title, please contact a subject librarian.

Articles

Types of persistent links to full-text articles include digital object identifiers (DOI), OpenURLs, and persistent links offered by database vendors. The DOI (about DOIs) and OpenURL (about OpenURLs) protocols have the appeal of standardization across vendors and platforms. Both the DOI and OpenURL are widely adopted standards which strive to better identify digital objects, to connect users to digital objects over time, give access to these objects independently of the platform on which they are found, and to maintain persistent access regardless of future location (and ownership) changes.

Step 1: Find article in electronic format

In order to link to the fulltext of an article, you must first locate it in fulltext. Please see How to Find Articles and Journals.

Step 2: Identify the best type of persistent link for your article

• Digital Object Idenftifier (DOI)
• OpenURL
• Persistent Links offered by Database and Journal Vendors

Depending on the article and the database in which it is found, you will need to determine the type of persistent link that will work best to give access to the article. Follow these steps to find the right type of link for your article:

Finding a Digital Object Identifier

If the article has a digital object identifier, you can create a link directly to the article. If there is no DOI, skip the next steps and go to Finding an OpenURL.

There are two ways to determine whether your article has been assigned a DOI:

1. DOI displayed with the article information
   

   If you locate a DOI in your article, use the following steps to convert it into a usable URL:

   1. Add the URL http://dx.doi.org/ in front of the DOI. Using the example above, it becomes http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/bjs.5818.
   2. Then add the Library Network’s proxy prefix https://login.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/login?url= in front of the URL from the previous step. By adding the Library Network’s proxy prefix (about the proxy server) to the URL assures that only authorized users may access the University’s licensed, electronic materials.
   3. Your final URL should be as follows: https://login.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/login?url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/bjs.5818.
   This will give you the web address for an article that has been assigned a DOI.

2. Do not have DOI information, but have article citation.
   If you have the citation information, you may choose to use a lookup service called Crossref where you can search to see if the article, in which you are interested, has been assigned a DOI. Once you have located an article’s DOI, follow the instructions above.

Finding an OpenURL

When you have located your article in fulltext, see if there is an Afficher!/GetIt! button that appears next to it. If the GetIt button appears, you will be able to generate an openURL. If there is no GetIt button skip the next steps and go to Persistent Links offered by Database and Journal Vendors.

1. Click on the GetIt! button (about GetIt).
2. The SFX page contains citation information for the article (title, journal, date, pagination) and lists the article’s potential “targets”. Each target is a collection, to which the Library subscribes, that holds a copy of the article in fulltext. In the example, the fulltext article can be found in three distinct collections.
3. Please note that not all publicatons permit openURLs to link directly to the article , instead some may link solely to the publication level, requiring the user to select the issue and subsequently the article. This means that some OpenURLs will lead the user to the main page of a publication requiring the user to consult the article citation and to locate the relevant issue and, subsequently, the article within that issue. For this reason, it is important that the full citation information of an article should accompany each openURL.
4. To find the openURL, while in this window, do a right click with your mouse. If your brower is Internet Explorer, view Properties, then Address (URL); if your browser is Mozilla Firefox: view page info.

5. This will give you the openURL to this article which can be copied, pasted or embedded in your website or course management system. A typical openURL may look something like this:

   http://sfx.scholarsportal.info/ottawa?sid=OVID:psycdb&id=pmid:&id=doi: 10.1016%2Fj.jpsychires.2006.02.011&issn=0022-3956&isbn=&volume=41&issu e=9&spage=795&pages=795-800&date=2007&title=Journal+of+Psychiatric+Res earch&atitle=Psychiatric+syndromes+comorbid+with+mental+retardation%3A +Differences+in+cognitive+and+adaptive+skills.&aulast=Di+Nuovo&pid=%3C author%3EDi+Nuovo%2C+Santo+F%3BBuono%2C+Serafino%3C%2Fauthor%3E%3CAN%3 E2007-06954-010%3C%2FAN%3E%3CDT%3E%3C%2FDT%3E

   Because it is a long and complex URL, you may prefer to embed this URL behind a shorter and more descriptive label.

Persistent Links offered by Database and Journal Vendors

Many, but not all, databases offer a stable way to link back to a specific article. Unfortunately, there is little or no consistency between how one vendor presents a persistent link from another vendor. Within a record, a label such as as "permanent link to this record", "stable URL", "durable link", or "linking options for this record" would likely refer to a permanent link and can be used to point back to an article.

Please note: In general, the URL that appears in the address box of your browser when viewing an article is a dynamically generated URL that is specific to your search session and is not a persistent URL. This is why a URL directly copied from the address box of your browser may not link back to the article to which it was meant to link.

Use this list to identify the correct instructions, by database, on how to create permanent links to articles. (link to permanent linking by db / vendor - under construction)

When you have identified the permanent link to the article, in order to allow access to users from off-campus, please remember to add the proxy prefix "https://login.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/login?url=" to the article URL. (About the proxy server)