This post is part of a multi-series of posts on digital resources for mental health professionals.

As clinicians we are required to keep up with new knowledge in our fields. However, this isn't always possible as a lot of research is published in journals that don't offer free full text of their articles.

Not all of us work in places that can afford institutional access to scientific journals and sometimes when we do, this access is limited to a handful of journals.

Fortunately, there are several ways to get a PDF copy of the journal article that you are looking for.

Egyptian knowledge Bank

For Egyptians, you can create an account on the Egyptian knowledge Bank (EKB), which is a local initiative that offers institutional access to students and academics in Egypt free of charge. This grants you access to journals published by most scientific publishers such as El Sevier, Wolters Kluwer, Springer Nature, Sage and others.

You will need an Egyptian IP address when accessing the site and you will need to create a scientific Research and Higher Education account and link it to your national ID card 🕵️.

Professional Association

If you are a member of a national or international specialist clinical association or organisation there is a high chance that they have some sort of library or institutional access. Get in touch with them. Most often these services are under utilised.

For example, the Royal College of Psychiatry has a library that offers access to a wide range of journals and databases. The Egyptian Medical Syndicate offers (or used to offer) access to a clinical decision support database for a very small fee.

Email the Authors

Just go ahead and send the corresponding author an email. There is nothing wrong with that and they will be glad that someone wants to read their paper. Some will even offer help with whatever you are working on. However, some will take their time to reply or not reply at all.

ResearchGate

ResearchGate is like LinkedIn or Facebook for academics. It is a social networking site for scientists and researchers where they can ask their peers questions, find collaborators or share papers.

As with most commercial social networks, I suspect they will be tracking you and you may get lots of unnecessary emails.

#ICanHazPDF

On social media sites like Mastodon (or Twitter 🤮), you can use this hashtag alongside a request for the paper you are trying to find (make sure to include a link) and someone may have access and send you a copy. It is quite amazing actually.

Sci-Hub

A shadow library that is not legal in many countries as it doesn't respect copyright law. It was founded in 2011 by Alexandra Elbakyan, in response to the high cost of research papers behind journal paywalls. Sci-hub's database is enormous and is probably the easiest way to find scientific papers that you are looking for.

Occasionally, Sci-Hub gets blocked or its domains get confiscated so if the link provided doesn't work check its Wikipedia page for the latest URL as the website keeps moving its domain name.

Get in touch

May be I can help, send me an email using the button below if you have tried the above and still can't find what you are looking for. It has to be an article in the field of psychiatry though.

And if you know of any other way to access scientific literature for free or for a very reduced fee, please leave a comment.