1. Topic J: Gathering evidence 3. Strategic paper gathering
In the previous storylines we talked about how to identify journal articles that are relevant for your research by using bibliographic databases, and we looked at techniques for searching those resources to get a good set of results. but once you have a list of references of relevance to you, you then need to be able to track down the full text of those papers, gather them together and manage them effectively. So that’s what we’ll be looking at in this Storyline.

2.
If you accessed the database you used to retrieve the results via the UCL Library Services website then you will normally see
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an SFX link next to each of your results. the name of a linking service which gives you direct access from a reference, in a database or catalogue, to the full text of an electronic resource. You simply click on this button and it will tell you the full text availability.
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In this example it tells us we have access to this article through the Ovid Lippincott Williams and Wilkins Total Access Collection, so we could simply click on the Go button and it should take us directly through to the full text of the item.
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In this example the journal is an open access journal, which means that the full text is freely available. UCL Library Services try to ensure links to open access journals are available through SFX wherever possible, but you might occasionally come across an article that is available on open access where the SFX link does not indicate the full text is available.
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In this final example you can see that the full text is not available. In which case you have various options. There are links for you to check for a printed copy of the article in Explore, to see if UCL has the item. There are also links to various other sources and an option to request an item on interlibrary loan, and I’ll talk a bit more about these options later.

3. Optional: Displaying results in abstract format in PubMed
If you are a PubMed user then you will know that when you view results so the abstract is displayed,
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which you can do for all results or for individual ones if you click on an individual title, then you will see
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links to the publisher’s website where the full text is available. These may be because the full text is available, as in this example where the article is open access, so freely available, or they may be simply because the publisher has provided a link but you need a subscription to view the full text. If you are accessing PubMed on the UCL network you will probably find that most of these links will take you through to the full text, because UCL subscribes to it. But sometimes they won’t work. If you are on a UCL computer this might be because we do have access to the full text but through a different route as you can subscribe to electronic journals in various different ways. Or it might be that we don’t have a subscription. If you are accessing PubMed off site you will find that the publisher’s links will only work if the article is freely available.
If you access PubMed via the databases list on the library website, however, you will see SFX links
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so these will take you through to the full text in the correct way, or provide other options as we’ve already seen where the full text is freely available.
Optional: Displaying results in abstract format in PubMed

4. Optional: Setting preferences in Google Scholar to show SFX links
Another resource where SFX can be useful is Google Scholar. If you are accessing Google Scholar from a computer on the UCL network you will automatically see
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SFX links in your results where UCL has access to the full text article.
If you are using Google Scholar from home then you can
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set your Scholar Preferences 'Library Links' setting to:
UCL (University College London) - – Fulltext
Although SFX gets it right 99% of the time, there are cases where an individual article may be freely available but SFX is not aware of it.
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This article from our list of Google Scholar results, for example, did not have an link, but if we click on the title itself
it takes us through to the abstract of the article with a link to the PDF
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Which is the full text of the article.

5. Similarly if we look at the record for the same article in PubMed and click on the SFX link
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It shows us that the full text is not available, but if we copy and paste the title into Google we will actually be able to access the full text.
So if it seems you can’t get the full text, it’s always worth putting the title into Google just in case.
One of the reasons you might find the full text of an article is available when you do a Google search but didn’t come up with an SFX link is where where the full text is made freely available online through personal websites, research groups sites, organisational websites, sample issues of journals or online repositories.

6. OAIster www.oaister.org
OAIster
Institutions who produce research outputs, such as universities, are likely to have their own institutional repository. UCL’s repository is called UCL Discovery.
Depending on publishers’ restrictions, authors can deposit the full text of their articles in a repository so it is freely available. Lots of research funders require that research outputs are available on open access and a repository makes this possible. In many cases the version that the publisher will allow to be made available in a repository is the author’s final version of the manuscript, so the text will be exactly the same as in the published version but it will not have the formatting of the final published version. There may also be an embargo period, which means the publisher will set a time restriction on how long after the article appears in the published journal the manuscript is allowed to be available from a repository.
A resource for looking for open access resources produced at other institutions from all over the world
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is OAIster, which allows you to cross-search around 1500 repositories from around the world.
But it is possible that the full text of the article you want is not available to you online. In which case you either need to identify another library that has the item, or make a request on interlibrary loan.

7. http://www.copac.ac.uk/ http://www.search25.ac.uk/
We already saw that SFX gives you the option to search for holdings elsewhere. Probably the two most useful options here are the M25 Union List of Serials and COPAC.
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The M25 Union List of Serials allows you to cross search University library catalogues from across London and the M25 area for journal holdings. Once you have found a record for the journal you are interested in you can click on the name of the university to view the location and date range of the holdings.
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The other resource of interest is COPAC, which cross searches university library holdings from across the UK and also the British Library.
If you do want to access material at the library of another institution, it’s always a good idea to check that you are eligible to use that library before you go. The UCL Library webpages has details of special access agreements that UCL has with other university libraries in London.

8.
If you are unable or don’t have the time to go to another library then you can request any item using UCL Library Service’s interlending and document supply service.
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You can submit your request through Explore, which is the gateway for searching UCL’s library resources. There is a link at the top of the page
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You will need to enter your library barcode and PIN and the details of the item you require. There is a charge for interlibrary loans, which is normally £3.

9. Managing papers – reference management packages
Create personal database of references
Store full text papers
Interact with Word
Insert references
Generate reference list
We’ve talked a lot now about gathering papers together. The final thing I want to talk about in this Storyline is managing your papers.
It’s unlikely that you will end up with a physical heap of papers such as this, you are more likely to have a selection of pdf files, or links to the full text of papers. It’s really important you keep track of all the papers that you might need to refer to in your work. You need to be able to quickly retrieve those papers again and you need to be able to cite them correctly in your work.
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There are various reference management packages that are available to help you manage your papers.
All of them allow you to create your own database of references, store the full text of papers, interact with Word so you can insert references and the software will create a reference list for you in the citation style of your choice.
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UCL has a license for EndNote software, so its available on the UCL Desktop and it’s also available in an online version so you can access your references from any computer.
There are also freely available packages which don’t have quite as much functionality as EndNote, but do more or less the same job and are probably adequate for the needs of an undergraduate student.
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Mendeley is a popular freely available product. Like EndNote this is available on the UCL desktop and also has a web version.
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Zotero is another populer freely available product.
It’s up to you which package you use but you’ll find there is a lot more support for EndNote at UCL then the other packages because we pay for a license for EndNote.
One of the great things about EndNote is the way you can get full text articles into your EndNote library. There are a number of ways of doing this. EndNote can pull in pdf files and create a record from the information contained in the PDF. Alternatively you can ask EndNote to search for the full text of articles for you. Click on the link to view the video to see how this works in EndNote.
Optional: Getting full text papers in EndNote

10. Gathering evidence Literature databases
Creating a good search strategy
Strategic paper gathering
Further support and training
Royal Free Hospital Medical Library
Skills training and guidance from across UCL Library Services
WISE for Life and Medical Sciences
UCL Library Services’ online guide to finding and using information
Available via Moodle moodle.ucl.ac.uk
Throughout this topic we’ve looked at using literature databases to identify references, we’ve explored how to create a good search strategy to make sure you’ve identified all the relevant papers, and finally we’ve explored how to get hold of the full text of those papers and tools to help you manage those papers.
The library at the Royal Free, and libraries across UCL, provide support in all these areas. We have information on our website, plus we offer scheduled training sessions and can arrange individual support and training. We also have an online course available via Moodle called WISE, where you can access lots of training guides and documentation.