Skip to Main Content

Accessing full text

Open Access

Many articles are now available as Open Access. This means they are free to access even on publishers’ platforms that typically enforce a paywall. Most publishers will indicate an article is Open Access by using the symbol of an opened padlock. 

There are a growing number of services that make it easier to find Open Access articles, and, where the ‘Version of Record’ (also known as 'Publisher’s PDF') is not available, you will often be able to find the ‘Author Accepted Manuscript’, which is the text after peer review but without any typesetting, on an institutional or subject repository rather than on the publisher’s web pages.

You can also use academic search engines that include open access content, to both search for literature and find open access full text at the same time, such as Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.co.uk), BASE (https://www.base-search.net), and Dimensions (https://app.dimensions.ai).  

Versions of paper

When searching for resources in Library Search, you may come across content which is Open Access and available from services such as SHURA (Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive) and Unpaywall (a database of Open Access resources now displaying its content through Library Search).
When using Unpaywall to access the full text of papers in academic, peer reviewed journals, you may come across different versions of the papers.  These are described below.
 

Submitted version This is the version of a paper that the authors have submitted for publication but has not yet been peer reviewed.  There may be significant differences between the content of the submitted version and the final published paper because changes are usually made in response to peer review.  It is also possible that the submitted manuscript may not be accepted for publication.
Accepted version The accepted manuscript is the version of a paper that has undergone peer review and has been accepted for publication in a journal.  This version of the paper includes any changes in response to peer review.  However, this version has not yet been typeset or copy-edited by the publisher, so often does not include things like the journal formatting.
Published version This is the version of record published in the journal.  It has been peer reviewed.

When accessing full text from Library Search, you may also come across preprints.  A preprint is a manuscript which has not been peer-reviewed or published in a journal, but has been made available by the authors on a preprint server.  There may be major differences between a preprint and a later published version and not all preprints go on to be published in a journal.

Should I use versions of a paper that are not peer reviewed?

As the content has not been scrutinised or critiqued in a peer review process, you should evaluate the content with this in mind and be cautious how you use them.  Mistaking these for peer-reviewed, published articles can result in the spread of misinformation.
For example, MedRxiv (pronounced med archive) gives the following caution about the health sciences related preprints on the MedRxiv server: 

"Caution: Preprints are preliminary reports of work that have not been certified by peer review. They should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behaviour and should not be reported in news media as established information."
https://www.medrxiv.org/

If you find an interesting preprint or submitted version of a paper, check to see if there is later, peer-reviewed version available.


Adsetts Library
Collegiate Library

Sheffield Hallam University
City Campus, Howard Street
Sheffield S1 1WB