Electronic Journals Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

The world of electronic journals is very dynamic for a multitude of reasons. No universal standards exist, technology changes rapidly, and publishers and commercial providers entertain many methods for presenting and pricing their products. This results in a complex array of choices and formats. Below are some of the most common questions posed about the electronic journals (ejournals) provided by the Health Sciences Libraries (HSL).

• How do I know what ejournals are available?
• Why are some ejournals available from home and some are not?
• Why don't all electronic journals look alike?
• Why do some journal title links go directly to the title whereas others go to a search screen?
• How do I view or print ejournal articles?
• Why doesn't the library provide access to all journal titles electronically?
• If I'm searching UW's Ovid, what am I searching?
• How do I save articles from Proquest?
• Can I link directly from MEDLINE citations to full-text articles?

How do I know what ejournals are available?

• Use the alphabetical list on the HealthLinks journals page to look up the title of the journal to see if it is available electronically. Titles include those HSL subscribes to individually or as part of a package, and those the library receives in conjunction with print subscriptions. Also listed are titles available to everyone at no charge if they contain useful full-text material, such as MMWR.
• Some journals are accessible via packages from the journals page. Click on the i icon in front of the package name for more information about each product. Non-health related titles within packages will not appear in the alphabetical list.
• The University Libraries Information Gateway includes journals from all non-health related disciplines.
• Additionally, if you search the UW Libraries Catalog for a title and look at the LIB. HAS statement, availability of ejournals is often indicated.
• Finally, searching the Web using a search engine may find sites for other ejournals. If you find a useful full-text title, please let us know so that we can review it.

Why are some ejournals available from home and some are not?

For journals that aren't freely available, license agreements require the library to screen for University of Washington (UW) status before allowing access.

• The most common strategy for authentication is registering official identifying numbers for UW computers, known as IP addressses. If you access ejournals from a campus computer, the IP is often recognized and access is granted. If you use the UWICK or the UW Libraries proxy server, your home computer is assigned a UW IP address and access is granted.
• Look for the lock icon next to the journal title for specific information about access restrictions and alternative passwords.

Why don't all electronic journals look alike?

Ejournals are produced by different publishers just as print journals are. These publishers can either be professional societies or commercial publishers. Ejournals can also be provided collectively by a commercial aggregator company such as Ovid who negotiates with individual publishers to provide multiple titles. Each provider of an ejournal creates the method by which you interact with them (or interface) and determines the format of the actual text. The current standard text formats include ASCII (plain text without graphics), HTML (looks different than the print, prints more pages than the print equivalent) or PDF (looks just like a snapshot of the print, requires a special free viewer available on the Internet).

In addition to the interface and text format, the number of years covered by an ejournal varies as well as the currency of the information provided. Ovid often is several weeks to a month behind since they acquire the data from the publishers and reformat it into HTML. Conversely, some publishers are providing the electronic copy prior to the equivalent print issue.

Why do some journal title links go directly to the title whereas others go to a search screen?

Again, the reason is due to how the ejournal is acquired. Most publishers permit a direct link to their journal titles whereas most aggregators present a search screen as the starting point for access to the group of titles they provide. Help for getting to specific titles within packages is available from the list of journals.

How do I view or print ejournal articles?

Viewing and printing depends upon both what the ejournal provides and your local setup. In most cases, you will use the web browser's print commands. Within the Health Sciences Libraries, you can print to a laser printer and pay using cash or your HSL copicard.

Why doesn't the library provide access to all journal titles electronically?

There are several reasons why HSL is not able to provide access to all ejournals.

• First, many titles are not yet available electronically. Publishers are making the transition but there are startup costs that are hindering some from making ejournals available.
• Second, there is often a cost to libraries to obtain the electronic copy of a journal. This cost may be bundled with the print with an associated increase in price, a markup percentage of the print, a separate fee, or online access may be dependent on whether a print subscription is retained.
• Third, long-term access to ejournals is often not guaranteed. Libraries license access on an annual basis instead of actually owning the ejournals. Once the license expires, access is denied. Since libraries are interested in archival access to published information, we are being cautious how quickly we convert print subscriptions to electronic.
• Also, we are sometimes not willing to accept the usage conditions stated in the license by the providers and therefore we do not provide access to these ejournals (i.e., access may be limited to computers located in the library building or the publisher may charge a set fee for each computer that has access to the ejournal).

If I'm searching UW's Ovid, what am I searching?

"Ovid" means different things to different people. Some relate it to MEDLINE and other databases provided by Ovid Technologies, Inc. To others, Ovid is a collection of electronic journals. Ovid sells many products, including citation databases and full-text electronic journals. The UW subscribes to 42 of the full text journals provided by Ovid. We do not subscribe to the Ovid MEDLINE database.

Within the Journals@Ovid collection, all of the Ovid titles are listed regardless of whether the UW has licensed the full-text. For the titles that are licensed within that group, there is a full-text icon. The remaining titles only provide citations and abstracts.

Searching full-text files has the advantage of letting you find information buried within an article. This is sometimes useful for finding a fact or piece of information contained within a paragraph. However, full-text searches may lead to useless results. For a comprehensive search on a topic it is usually better to search a structured, broad-based database, for example to use the PubMed search engine for MEDLINE. Here you will only be searching for information in a limited number of fields, such as title, abstract or Medical Subject Headings.

An overall tip to remember: when searching MEDLINE or Ovid, always confirm what it is you are actually searching since not all MEDLINEs/Ovids are identical. Years of coverage, interfaces, and journals included can vary depending upon the vendor.

How do I save articles from Proquest?

Here are two methods that should work to save articles from the Proquest databases using a web browser such as Mozilla or Internet Explorer.

1. Choose "File", then "Save as" at the top of the browser window, or
2. Use the "Save" icon in the Acrobat Reader window within Proquest.

Can I link directly from MEDLINE citations to full-text articles?

The PubMed MEDLINE database does provide some direct links from an article reference to full text. Usually this linkage occurs when HSL directly licenses a title with an individual publisher. However, some ejournal packages are also being linked such as the IDEAL ejournals from Academic Press. One caveat - with PubMed, IPs are used for UW authentication, so access by alternative password or using an internet service provider will not work.