How to get the PDF?

How do you get the pdf of the article that you desperately need? My colleague Pascal Braak referred last week in the Open Access lecture to the Open Access button to find publications. At the UvA Library we have also made a short video on our UvA Journal collection. But it could happen that these two options still do not lead you to the specific article you are looking for. There are more ways though. Here are my personal favorites.* 

1. UvA Journal collection

• Go to our Journal collection (with complete or full text journals).

2. Interlibrary loan (ILL)

Request it from another university library via ILL.

• Go to Worldcat Discovery and search on the title of the article.
• Make a copy-request for it. 

3. Request copy via the author
Try to contact the author.

• See if the author has a website with an email address. 
• Check if the author is on social media (like linkedIn or twitter).

4. Unpaywall button (browser extension for Chrome and Firefox)
Unpaywall is a browser extension that detects Open Access versions of articles on publisher's websites.

• Go to http://unpaywall.org/ and install the extension.

5. Google Scholar button (browser extension for Chrome and Firefox)
With the extension you can do a search automatically in the Google Scholar collection.
See this short video on how it works.

• Go to the Chrome or Firefox webstore.
• Remember to add the UvA collection to your Google Scholar.

6. Hashtag #ICanHazPdf
Use on twitter the hashtag #ICanHazPdf. together with the link to the requested publication. If someone has access to the pdf of the article, then they could send it to you.




* With thanks to my colleague Guus van den Brekel from the University Medical Library in Groningen for tips.