Article Linker FAQ

What is ArticleLinker?

Serials Solutions Article LinkerT is a full-featured OpenURL link resolver that seamlessly links UAB's online journal resources with various other library resources. When you find a citation or reference to a specific article, Article Linker supplies the best available path to the content in the library collection.

How do I use Article Linker?

Selecting the Article Linker button or clicking on a hyperlink within an OpenURL enabled database produces the Article Linker results page with direct links to one or more of the following:

• Full text of the article
• Table of contents of the journal, which links to the full text of the article
• Database home page, which then must be searched to retrieve the full text
• Library catalog
• Custom links such as ILLIAD forms. This means that in many instances Article Linker will fill out the citation information for you within an ILLIAD order form!

See an example ArticleLinker page.

Where do the various links to content go?

Depending on the publisher or content provider, links to the full text may be available at the article, journal, or database levels.

Why is an article link not always available?

If the article link is absent from the Article Linker results page it could be due to one of the following reasons:

• Neither Lister Hill or Mervyn Sterne library subscribe to the full text for that particular title. (Please be sure to double check Lister Hill Library's Online Catalog and/or Mervyn Sterne Library's Online Catalog to see if the journal is available in print format.)
• The publisher of the journal title may not provide full text online
• There is not enough data in the search criteria to trigger an article level link
• The provider of the journal does not support the OpenURL standards.

Sometimes there are many options for full text and journal links. Why?

The same journal is often available in more than one database. Article Linker will display the links to all content accessible to the library. When this occurs the range of dates through each database may be different or the format of the full text may be different (PDF versus HTML format for instance).

How do I get to the article if there is only a journal or database link?

In cases where Article Linker can only take you to the journal's table of contents or a database home page, you will have to browse the table of contents to locate the issue and article you need; or, search the database to retrieve the full-text article.Article Linker provides an article level link even though the full-text of the article is not available. Why?

This can occur for several reasons:

• Full-text articles are withheld from the online versions of the database by the publisher or author.
• Meta-data appear in a database before the publisher has made the full text available. Sometimes the coverage dates are not supplied in the library's data and Article Linker will provide an article link with the hope that the library has access to that date range.

Additional Questions

If you have additional questions about Article Linker, please contact the Reference Desk at (205) 934-2230 or through the