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Full-Text Serials
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Background
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From the earliest days to the present, scholarly societies have
played a strong role in publishing serials to
discuss scholarly research in their areas of interest.
These serials have generally had lower subscription costs than
those of comercial serials of comparable quality.
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Today the websites of most scholarly societies reflect this
tradition by providing information about their serial publications
(journals, bulletins and newletters):
- Most scholarly societies websites maintain areas
that give the tables of contents for their serials.
Access to these is generally free of charge to the public.
- Some scholarly societies websites also maintain a
search engine to the contents of these serials.
Again, access to these is generally free of charge to the public.
- In addition, it is increasingly common for scholarly societies
to publish the full text of their serial publications online.
- These archives are generally accessible from the tables of
contents and search engines at their websites.
- Access to the full-text is, however, generally restricted to
individuals and
institutions that have a subscription to the serial in question.
- But a growing number of scholarly societies in the
sciences have adopted a policy of free access to the full-text
of all but the
current 12 months of their serial publications.
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Locating the Serials
When You Know the Publishing Society
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Step 1:
Locate the website of the society, by
using either the
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Step 2:
Go to the website of the society.
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Step 3:
Locate the serials on that website by looking for
headings like
Journals or Newsletters or
Publications.
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Step 4:
You will likely find a table of contents (and perhaps a search
engine as well). You should then:
- Locate the entry for the desired article.
The entry will probably include a summary (or abstract) of the
article and also a link to a full-text file (perhaps in pdf
format). The summary is generally free of charge.
- click on the link to the full-text file
- if you encounter problems accessing it, this means that
either:
- you are not permitted to access the file (this would be the
case if neither you nor your institution has a subscription to
it), or
- you have not configured your computer properly to enable an
authentication mechanism to be initiated, which would then ask
for the user id and password appropriate for that resource.
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Locating the Serials
When You Know Only the Serial Title
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Step 1:
Locate the webpage for the serial title, by
using a large search engine like
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Step 2:
Go to the webpage for the serial title.
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Step 3:
You will likely find a table of contents (and perhaps a search
engine as well). You should then:
- Locate the entry for the desired article.
The entry will probably include a summary (or abstract) of the
article and also a link to a full-text file (perhaps in pdf
format). The summary is generally free of charge.
- click on the link to the full-text file
- if you encounter problems accessing it, this means that
either:
- you are not permitted to access the file (this would be the
case if neither you nor your institution has a subscription to
it), or
- you have not configured your computer properly to enable an
authentication mechanism to be initiated, which would then ask
for the user id and password appropriate for that resource.
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Note
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Prior to 2002, August 12,
this page consisted of a collection of links to free full-text archives of
some serial publications of scholarly societies. Most, but not all, of
these publications were newsletters or similar to newsletters;
only a small number were research publications.
With the passage of time, it became too costly to maintain this page in
that form,
because of the very high frequency with which the URLs changed (even
when the top level URL for the society website remained constant).
As an alternative, we have provided the above instructions for locating
full-text archives of the serial publications of scholarly societies.
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