EndNote Desktop: X9 & 20: Finding Full Text

What is Find Full Text?

• EndNote uses data stored in your references to search the Web for the corresponding full text file as a PDF or URL.  Once found, the file is automatically downloaded and attached to the appropriate reference.

Connecting Find Full Text to the UNC Libraries

The Find Full Text feature works best when your computer is connected to the UNC campus network.  To improve retrieval of full text files when off-campus, do the following:

1. In your EndNote library, select Edit > Preferences from the menu bar.  The EndNote Preferences dialog box will open.

2. In the left column, click on Find Full Text.

3. Check all four boxes for Web of Science, DOI, PubMed, and OpenURL.

4. Copy and paste the following text into the field called OpenURL Path:

http://vb3lk7eb4t.search.serialssolutions.com/

5. Verify that the information in the dialog box matches the box picture below.

6. Click the Apply button. Then, click OK. 

To Find Full Text

1. In your EndNote library, click on the reference(s) for which you would like to find full text files. 
2. Click on the Find Full Text button  in the toolbar along the top.  A box will appear with EndNote's Find Full Text copyright and usage notice.  Click OK.
3. A search script will appear under Find Full Text in the Groups panel in the left column.  This indicates the number of PDFs or URLs that EndNote was able to find.
4. Click on Found PDF or Found URL in the Groups panel in the left column to view the references for which full text files were found.
5. The PDFs EndNote finds will be automatically downloaded and attached to the appropriate reference.  EndNote finds more articles when you are on-campus and fewer when you are off-campus.

Not Finding Full Text?

You may not get the full text even if UNC Libraries provide access to the article and you are on campus.  There are a few reasons for this:

• EndNote may not have a find full text agreement with the publisher of the journal you need, even if the UNC library has access.
• The article you are looking for may be too new for the PDF link to be available.
• The article you need may be buried in a large full-text database that does not allow individual articles to be found.
• The article you are looking for is in a supplementary issue of a journal.

If you are off-campus, you can try logging into a campus VPN and attempting to download the full text while connecting to the VPN.

If the full text is not found using Find Full Text, then you can manually attach the PDF to your references.  Some aggregator databases, such as ScienceDirect or  EBSCO databases such as CINAHL or PsycInfo, provide a URL that will take you to the full text instead of providing you a PDF.

Clicking on the URL will allow you to access the article by entering your Onyen and password.  If there is no URL, you can try typing the article title into PubMed or Google Scholar and using the Find@UNC button to locate the PDF or to request the article through Interlibrary Loan. 

You may want to save the PDF in the same folder as those EndNote locates automatically.  To do that, find the .Data file with the same name as your library, open the PDF folder, and save the PDF.

Once you save the PDF file to your computer, you can attach it to the EndNote citation with the paper clip icon found in the top tabs of the reference window.