The Medical Library e-journal collection may be accessed
via our A-to-Z e-Journal & eBook List.
In MUSM buildings, no logon is
required.
For off-campus access to ejournals and
ebooks:
- MUSM students, full-time
faculty, and staff must use their Mercer
email username (e.g. smith_ab) and password to
logon.
- MUSM faculty and residents
who do NOT have Mercer email
accounts must use their GaIN
username and password to logon.
Access
the A-to-Z eJournal & eBook List
To report problems or ask
about access to specific journals, please contact the Medical Library via
reference.ill@gain.mercer.edu or
phone (478-301-4056).
Frequently Asked
Questions about e-Journals
Accessing e-Journals
There are three ways to access electronic journals
available to MUSM faculty, staff and students. Each offers a different method
and breadth of access. Following is a description and method of access for each
list.
If you have questions or would like
training in using these
resources, please contact the Medical Library at
478-301-4056 or
reference.ill@gain.mercer.edu
The A-to-Z List
The primary
resource for electronic journals is the A-to-Z List, a
searchable list offering access to more than 3,000 titles in medicine, biology,
physiology, behavioral medicine and related disciplines, nursing, allied
health, and consumer health. Access is limited to MUSM faculty, staff and
students. Full text access is under embargo (unavailable) up to 1 year on
some journals.
The list offers access to journals both on and off
campus. For off-campus access, login through the Library’s proxy server
(which makes off-campus access possible) is required. MUSM full-time faculty,
staff, and students should use their email username and password to log
on; MUSM volunteer faculty and residents should use their GaIN username and
password.
The A-to-Z List may be accessed from using the link
near the top of this page.
The GaIN e-Journals List
GaIN provides
electronic resources to member institutions across the state. For this reason,
the list of electronic journals in GaIN lists only those titles that offer free
full text. While this list is substantial (more than 200 titles), it is
necessarily more limited than the A-to-Z list, which is available to MUSM
faculty, staff and students only.
The GaIN e-Journals List may be accessed at http://gain.mercer.edu/journals.asp or
by logging in to GaIN and clicking the “Electronic Journals” link on
the GaIN services page.
PubMed LinkOut
LinkOut is a feature
of PubMed (the National Library of Medicine search interface for MEDLINE)
designed to provide users with links from citations in PubMed to a wide variety
of resources, including a specific library’s print and electronic
holdings. Mercer Medical Library participates in the LinkOut program, which
means that for journals available from the Mercer Medical Library in print or
electronic formats, icons in PubMed result sets indicate availability of the
journal.
The number of journals in Mercer's LinkOut account is
not as comprehensive as the A-to-Z list, nor is the full text of e-journals
available from off campus using this resource. You can read more about LinkOut
at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/linkout/
PubMed with Mercer
Medical Library journal information may be accessed from by using this specific
URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?holding=musmlib_fft
Electronic Journals, A-to-Z, PubMed LinkOut -
what is all this?
Consider a
subscription to a traditional print journal. When the library subscribes to a
print journal, all that means is that this journal will be made available to
the library through the mail. It is a responsibility of the library to catalog
it and place it on the shelf, making it available to faculty and students. How
we enter these journals in finding tools such as the library catalog and where
we place them on the shelves is up to us.
Likewise, a subscription to
an electronic journal provides access to a journal through the Internet. The
access method, or "electronic shelf," that the library uses to make the journal
available is also up to us (within the context of applicable licensing
restraints). One of the useful things about electronic journals is that they
can be placed on more than one "shelf"--both A-to-Z and PubMed LinkOut for
Mercer Medical Library.
What are embargoes? Why are they applied?
Embargoes are sometimes placed on titles sold through
aggregators (third-party companies, rather than the publisher) or made freely
available online, so that the publisher can protect the profit margin of
subscriptions. The publishing business, particularly the STM
(scientific-technical-medical) publishing business, is highly competitive,
which can have the effect of limiting information access. Restricted access as
well as the rising costs of print and online journal subscriptions is driving
the "open access" movement, an initiative to promote the exchange of STM
information by removing price and permission barriers while maintaining
intellectual rights protections. For more information about open access please
see:
An open access overview from the SPARC OPen Access
Newsletter
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm
For journals not published under an open access
policy, a subscription to an electronic journal that includes a site license
(license for all computers at a site, generally a building or an entire campus)
is required to gain full-text access to the most recent issues with no embargo.
Why is access to some titles limited to
on-campus use?
Subscriptions to electronic journals are subject to
permissible uses as defined by contract with the publisher or provider. In most
cases, the library is able to make these titles available off-campus to MUSM
faculty and staff through the use of a proxy server. With both A-to-Z and
PubMed LinkOut, the library controls which journal titles are in each list.
However, in the case of PubMed LinkOut, there is no provision for making titles
available off campus as there is with A-to-Z; A-to-Z is the preferred method of
access for off-campus users.
What is a proxy server?
A proxy server is a computer that helps the library
provide off-campus access to journals otherwise limited to on-campus use for
authorized users (MUSM faculty and students). The MUSM proxy server requires a
username and password. MUSM full-time faculty, staff, and students should use
their email usernames and passwords; MUSM volunteer faculty and residents
should use their GaIN usernames and passwords. For questions or to report
problems with off-campus access, please contact the Medical Library
at 478-301-4056 or
reference.ill@gain.mercer.edu.
