Environmental Sciences: Finding Full-Text

Finding the full-text of research articles can be unintuitive and frustrating sometimes. Many of the databases the Libraries subscribe to have the full-text PDFs readily available, but some of our databases only index articles, meaning they only have basic information like the title, author, journal, abstract, etc. For these database indexes, you may have to try a couple of additional steps in order to track down the full-text.

If you don't see in your search results a text or a button that says "Full Text PDF",  "Full Text from Publisher", "Full Text Links" or something similar, try the steps outlined here. If you still have questions, contact your subject librarian!

If you don't see an option to get to the full-text directly from your search, copy the article's title and paste it into the main search box on the Miami Libraries home page. Next to "Search", change the drop-down box to "Articles", and then click "Go". 

If you see a matching title in your results, click on it to open the article information. You should see an overlay pop up, and if we have access to the full-text of the article, you should see one or more options to view it under the section heading "View Online".

If you don't see any matching results when you search the article title in the Libraries' home page search box, the next step is to see if we subscribe to the journal. Just under the main search bar on the Libraries' home page, you should see a link to the "Journal Finder".

Copy and paste the journal title (not the article title) into the search box on the next page, and if there is a matching title in your results, click on it.

Check the year of publication for the article you want to read and compare it to the dates listed under each link in the "View Online" section. For many journals, we may only have access to a few years' worth of its articles, so be careful! If we do have access to the journal for the year your article was published, click on the corresponding link.

Most of the time, you will be taken to the archives of the journal. From here, you can either click through the years, volumes, and issues to narrow in on the article you need, or you can paste the article title into the journal's search.

If the above steps did not help, you may have to submit a request for the material through a process called Interlibrary Loan (ILL). 

Miami Libraries subscribes to resources that support our students and faculty, but we can't get access to everything. Other institutions may have different subscriptions. If we don't have access to an article or resource that you need for your research, you can submit an ILL request for it and we will reach out to other libraries to get a copy for you. This is a free service but it may take a few days. Be sure to start your research early so we can make sure you can get what you need in plenty of time!

You can log in to our Interlibrary Loan system at any time to submit a request or check on requests you have previously submitted. You typically have 30 days to download requested resources once they have been received, so keep an eye on your email for those notifications.

In order to submit a request, you will need to enter as much of the article's citation information as you can. This info includes things like: article title; author(s); journal title, volume, and issue; page range of the article, etc. Make sure you have this ready before you fill out the ILL request form.