Libkey.io

Almost every article you’ll see in databases like the NHS Knowledge Hub, Medline, CINAHL, or even Pubmed and Google Scholar, will have a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) – effectively its address on the internet.

To use it:

1. Copy the DOI of the article you’re interested in – it’s usually a combination of letters and numbers (be careful not to copy the whole address if it starts with dx.doi.org/ – you only need the text after that part. If it’s easier, delete the part you don’t need once you’ve pasted the entire web address into Libkey.io).
2. Open Libkey.io here (or here for RDASH staff) and paste in the DOI.  You may also need your NHS Open Athens account – if you don’t have one yet, sign up in a couple of minutes here.)
3. Click “Find Article” and Libkey.io will do the rest.

If the full text is available, you’ll see links to either a PDF, or the website where it’s held.

If it’s NOT available, you’ll see a message saying “Library Access Options”.
Click it, and look for the option “Submit an ILL request for this item”.
Click that and you’ll see a form automatically filled in with the article details.  Add your own details and press Submit to send a request to our team to try and track down a copy for you.

A couple of examples:

Example 1 – An article that Libkey can find full text for

1.  Found an interesting article

2. Found the DOI

3. Pasted into Libkey.io

4. Full text available!

Example 2 – Full text not available

1. Found an article

2. Found the DOI

3. Pasted into Libkey.io

4. Full text not available

4. Look for the option to request the item

5. Form automatically filled in – just add your details & click Submit

FAQs:

Can’t find the DOI?  Sometimes they’re pretty well hidden, so have a good look, and remember – the whole article has to exist somewhere on a website to have a DOI.  If it’s not published online, for example a local public health journal that’s only available in print – it won’t have a DOI.  Try searching for the article title, or journal using Google, or Bing to see if you can find the publisher’s page for the article – the DOI should be available there.

Libkey.io isn’t linking to the article, even though it said it was going to.  Very occasionally, Libkey.io fails to get to the PDF or website of the article when it thought it could.  If this happens, let us know with a quick email and the details of the article.  It’s usually available, but something may have been set up incorrectly – we can usually get that fixed and access the article for you.

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