Infrequently Asked Questions: "Order PDF" or Pay-Per-View Articles.

 Hello All,

 

Recently a patron stopped by the desk and asked a question about an odd collection we have called ScienceDirect PPV that works differently to practically all the other online collections have access to. Articles in this collection grant access on a pay-per-view basis, which means the library purchases temporary access to the material for individual patrons.

The collection applies only to certain articles on ScienceDirect from Elsevier.

 

Figure 1: An image of an article on ScienceDirect with the "Order PDF" button circled in red.

These articles will seem to be inaccessible to us, however if you see the "order PDF" button on the page, you will want to double check to see if it is in ScienceDirect PPV. You can check by either clicking "looking for full text," next to the "order PDF" button, or by copying the DOI and looking it up in our Journal A-Z article search. (Remember, the DOI is everything after https://doi.org/ in the link.)

Figure 2: An image of the same article from Figure 1 but with "looking for full text" and the DOI link circled in red.

Either of these methods should take you to a page where you can confirm if the article or journal is part of the ScienceDirect PPV collection.

 

Figure 3: A search page for an article in Journals A-Z with the ScienceDirect PPV collection and the instruction note circled in red.

 From there, if the article is available from ScienceDirect PPV, you, or the patron you are working with, can proceed to click the "order PDF" button on the article page. This will bring up an order form page.

Figure 4: The order form page on the ScienceDirect website for the article in Figure 1.

 Once the information is filled out and the form is submitted a request will be sent to the Electronic Resources department. They will determine if funds are available to purchase access to the article, and if so, they send a PDF of the article to the patron who requested access.

 The Complication (Because There is Always a Complication)

 We are not always able to determine if a ScienceDirect article is from the PPV collection just by looking at the article page. For some as of yet unknown reason, articles that we definitively do not have access to can appear one of at least two different ways on the ScienceDircect website. 

 

An article can appear with a clear message stating UNCG does not have access to it.

 

Figure 5: A picture of an article on ScienceDirect with a banner message stating UNCG does not have access to the article in a red box.

 

Or it can look exactly like an article that we can access through ScienceDirect PPV.

Figure 6: The same article from figure five, but this page has an "order PDF" button and no banner message.

 The only way to be sure is to click "looking for full text" or to search the article by the DOI.

 

Figure 7: The journals A-Z search page for the example article in figures 5 and 6. It has notes that state the system was unable to find full text links for the article and that fulfillment is not available.

 If you run into an article like this, the best thing is to direct the patron to our inter-library loan system. That will have the best chance of getting them the full text.

 

Hopefully this helps if you run across an article like this in the future. 

 

(Special thanks to Marcie Burton in Electronic Resources for the help in figuring out how this system works!)