A few months back I did a quick and dirty comparison between two options facing many authors: reprint charges and charges
for open-access publication. While this wasn't comprehensive, it was clear that the charges for a few hundred reprints is often very close to the costs to make an article instantly available to everyone in the world with access to the Internet.
To be fair, I don't know how many people without Internet access might request print copies of the article from the author; we certainly cannot assume that everyone has this, but I wonder how many without access have access to indices and reference lists and postage. But there are also the very real costs involved in requesting copies and waiting for their arrival, and on the other end, of staff handling the request and the associated mailing costs. If those were added up, a true cost of requesting and supplying a reprint might be surprising, and balance options for paying for single copies of a needed article online.
Authors can legally distribute their paid-for reprint copies to anyone they choose, but many copyright agreements prohibit other ways for the author to supply print copies.
Searches in PubMed can be very easily limited to retrieval of articles which are available at no cost; a search of oaister, which indexes more than 700 institutional repositories, can also be very productive.
Systematic reviews done for Cochrane or other publications with NIH funding are eligible for submission to the PMC author manuscript archive, but there do not seem to be any there (yet).
Pam Sieving
Pamela C. Sieving, MA, MS
Biomedical Librarian/Informationist
National Institutes of Health Library
10 Center Drive room 1L09G
Bethesda, Maryland USA 20892-1150
301 451-5862 voice 301 402-0254 fax
[log in to unmask]
nihlibrary.nih.gov
________________________________
Amazing Research. Amazing Help.
-----Original Message-----
From: Margaret Allen [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 1:12 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Sources for free full-text medical articles (MEDLIB-L ILL's)
Thank you for posting this list, of value to many. It would be nice if our Coordinator - bless her hear for taking on this thankless job - could recommend posting a compiled list on MLANET. While not a library that can fill these request
I would add that many journals, especially those in nursing/allied health, routinely post their CE articles on their websites as free full-text. I note which ones on the Key journal lists I compile for CINAHL (write to [log in to unmask] for copies - nursing done & new allied health list still in progress). This is something I always teach in MLA CE classes and point out when speaking to nursing audiences.
It may also help to see if requester has memberships that entitle them to free access. Our role can become showing them how to access 24/7, not having to do it for them. We (NAHRS Task force on mapping the literature) will be looking at this in a series of articles adding to the OJIN.
In addition, if not an emergency, they can usually email the author for a reprint (and possibly their expertise); email addresses are included in the MEDLINE and CINAHL records. This is something we taught years ago in Grateful Med outreach classes. Smaller libraries might choose to do this for their users.
Finally, I'm a little disturbed by number of requests for Cochrane Reviews, which every health sciences library ought to be able to access. I used to recommend an alternative source, the Cochrane Plain Language summaries, but just learned that they are no longer free. As many countries have licensed the Cochrane Library, including the UK, those of us in the U.S. and many non Third World countries are now cut off from the formerly free parts of the Cochrane Library. Is this another case of a vendor limiting access to what was formerly free? At least DARE and HTA are still available at http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/crd/. What about access to systematic reviews produced with U.S. federal funding?
Peg
Peg Allen, Library Consultant
P.O. Box 2, Stratford, WI, 54484
715-687-4976
www.pegallen.net pegallen67 @ yahoo.com
Coordinator, Hmong Health Education Network, www.hmonghealth.org
----- Original Message ----
From: Doris Samojluk <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Thursday, February 8, 2007 7:43:35 AM
Subject: [MEDLIB-L] Sources for free full-text medical articles (MEDLIB-L ILL's)
Dear Medlibbers,
I would like to share this checklist for finding free full text medical articles (of special interest for low-budget libraries):
1. PubMed Central (for Latin American articles in Spanish and Portuguese, check the Scientific Electronic Library Online, at www.scielo.org)
2. Local holdings, including online databases the library has access to.
3. Google Advanced Search (I've got better results than Google Scholar for this purpose. At the Exact Phrase box, type several words of the title in exact order).
4. Check www.freemedicaljournals.com.
5. Check the journal's webpage even though it may not be a free-access journal, because sometimes they have free issues for promotional purposes (more than once I found the article I was looking for in the only free issue available!)
6. Find the author's email address and just ask for the article. Most of the time the email address is listed in the Abstract Display along with the author's affiliation. If the email address is not listed try the affiliated institution webpage.
If somebody else knows of other source of free medical articles, please add it to the list, so we can have a "cooperative checklist" and benefit from others colleages's experience.
My two cents from the South (of the world). HTH,
Doris Samojluk
Biblioteca E. Irving Mohr (www.edu.ar/es/biblioteca) Universidad Adventista del Plata
25 de Mayo 99
3103 - Libertador San Martín
Entre Ríos
Argentina
Phone: 54-343-4910010, ext. 1414
Fax: 54-343-4918001
Email: [log in to unmask]
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