Retrieving full texts

A not so easy step of a literature synthesis

September 2024

Nicolas Casajus

Senior data scientist
@FRB-CESAB    

Introduction

Introduction

• WOS, Scopus, OpenAlex do not host full text (PDF) only citations
• Downloading full text is a stage in itself

Two problems

• A volume problem: After title/abstract screening, the volume of articles may still be substantial (several hundred or even thousands)

Finding such a large volume of PDF is an unusual process (blacklisting, institution approval, etc.).

• An access problem: Full text access is often subject to a fee and institute subscriptions decreased over years

Major obstacle to completeness of systematic map/review.

The full text search is often underestimated and rarely mentioned as a step in the review process. However it:

• is very time-consuming
• is indispensable (influence on the final corpus and therefore on the results)
• requires a high degree of rigor (renaming, archiving, linking citations to files, etc.)

Semi-automatic search

• Zotero search engine

Manual search

• Institution subscriptions

• Search on ResearchGate

• Search on Google

filetype: pdf "Low human interest for the most at-risk reef fishes worldwide"

Check that your retrieve the good article

Manual search

• Sci-Hub (not so legal, but…)

Access denied in France (change your DNS)

Manual search

• Anna’s Archive (not so legal, but…)

Enhance Zotero search engines

• Edit the file located in: { Zotero Path }/locate/engines.json and add:

{
    "name": "Sci-Hub DOI",
    "alias": "Sci-Hub DOI",
    "icon": "http://sci-hub.se/favicon.ico",
    "_urlTemplate": "http://sci-hub.se/{z:DOI}",
    "description": "SciHub Lookup",
    "hidden": false,
    "_urlParams": [],
    "_urlNamespaces": {
        "z": "http://www.zotero.org/namespaces/openSearch#"
    },
    "_iconSourceURI": "http://sci-hub.se/favicon.ico"
}

More lookup engines: https://github.com/bwiernik/zotero-tools/blob/master/engines.json

Request full text

• Request full text on ResearchGate
• Contact the corresponding author

Non-digitized documents

• On-site consultation
• Inter-library loan
• Digitization

Rigorous follow-up

Reporting

Missing full texts

• Definitely not free
• Not available on Sci-Hub
• No response from authors on ResearchGate
• Not published at all

Loss of completeness for your map/review => Limit of the exercise

Missing full texts

How many?

• As few as possible
• No written EEC/EEJ rule
• < 10%

Missing full texts

• Discuss it as a limitation in the “Limitations of the map/review” section
• Provide as much justification as possible (in-depth research, etc.)
• Include the list of articles concerned as an additional file

Source: Evidence of the impact of noise pollution on biodiversity: A systematic map

Good luck!