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]