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Full Text Finder & Publication Finder FAQs for Staff

This guide will assist library staff in determining a course of action when confronted with link resolver and online journal problems.

General Advice

Beth needs this from you if you have a question or problem with a link:

  • Full citation or as much as possible (journal & article title, year, volume, issue; author is helpful too)
  • Database where the citation is located (where you clicked on Full Text Finder)
  • If possible, the name and email of the user so I can follow up if needed. 

 

Common Issues - notify me

The Full Text Finder results indicate that "full text" is available, but when I click on that link, the full text cannot be found.

There may be several reasons for this.  Notify me as soon as possible.

  • The URL is incorrect in the database. 
  • The title did have full text available, but for some reason, the database vendor no longer has access to it.
  • The title is available to us full text, but for unknown reasons, the publisher is denying access.
  • The title was accidentally enabled as full text when in fact, we do not have full text access.
  • Full Text Finder is unable to link to the full text because there is not enough metadata provided to resolve the URL. 
  • We have access to some full text, but not all and the coverage needs to be customized. 

An off campus user tried to get a full text article, but a page opens that says "you do not have permission to view this page" or something to that effect (not a log in page).  The article can be accessed within the library.            

This is likely a proxy issue that Matt Anderson or I can probably fix.  All e-journal titles & databases have "proxy settings" that can vary greatly.  A user encountering this message has either 1) tried to access a title that I missed enabling or 2) the URL of the journal title is not in the library's WAM forward table and so the user cannot be authenticated properly or 3) the URL in the WAM forward table is incorrect. 

If the user can wait, I can try to fix it quickly.  If not or if Matt or I are not at the library, it might be best to fax or e-mail the article to the user. 

The link to the journal title was clicked, but the page won't load--eventually there is an error code (504 gateway timeout is common).

Again, several possible reasons, often that we have no or little control over: 

  • Vendor network/server issue
  • SVSU campus network issue (usually an overall slowdown, not limited to one database/application)

Often, if you try again in about 5-10 minutes, all is well.  If not, let Beth or Matt know so some sort of action can start.   It is sometimes hard to figure out where the problem lies with this type of issue. ALWAYS TRY CLEARING YOUR BROWSER CACHE FIRST.

The full text link in Full Text Finder is clicked on, but the result is a 404 ERROR.

  • This is probably a broken link at the publisher level.

Publication Finder has the same title (same ISSN) listed twice. 

  • This is a situation that is more annoying than actually damaging. Sometimes EBSCO can correct this.