EBVMA: Tools for Finding Free Legal Copies of Articles

You have a citation and you want to read the full article.  You search online. You locate it.
Bam.
You hit a wall that demands something in return for access to the article – money to rent, money to purchase, a subscription, creating an account and logging in – what are options for locating free, legal access to the full-text of the article?
 This session begins with an overview of barriers to full-text access.  It continues with a discussion of article versions – most commonly described as pre-print, post-print, and published version – sometimes one version is freely available and another is not, does that matter? If you are an author, what choices may you have to increase distribution of your work?
Strategies for locating full-text articles are several-fold.  Links to full-text articles can be integrated within search engine results, within databases, and/or located using Internet Browser Extensions, aka Browser Buttons or Browser Plug-ins.  Integration in search engine results and within database are powerful because they can searching for articles with locating full-text. These also often provides more than one link to an article.  Browser Extensions assist with locating freely available article copies from a wide variety of locations across the web and can be efficient because you do not need to visit the myriad places individually that they search collectively.  In addition to searching for individual articles, being familiar with online collections and frequently consulted journals housed within these is a best practice. Following journal, authors, and publishers on social media sites can provide early notification of new articles and sometimes temporary links to the full-text article.  Being aware of membership benefits and local library resources are additional best practices.