_scientists_: Journal Access

Myself (

luciddork) wrote in

_scientists_,
@ 2008-05-14 10:21:00

Journal Access
I find myself soon to be graduated and gleefully headed off into the private sector. I realized the other day, though, that I will soon be losing access to all the journals my University has subscriptions to. Is it common for companies to have accounts with journals? Do they buy them on an as needed basis for related research only? What are the common practices for this?

In short, to those of you outside of a university setting: How do you read your journals?

(Post a new comment)

	annie_oakley 2008-05-14 05:30 pm UTC (link)
	Thanks for asking this question! I was wondering the same thing myself. (Reply to this)

	cheez_ball 2008-05-14 05:30 pm UTC (link)
	Depends on the company. Many large companies will get a subscription to a university's access portal so the employees have the same access as, say, a grad student at the university would. Some smaller companies subscribe to a few journals and share them. (Reply to this)

xraytheenforcer
2008-05-14 05:33 pm UTC (link)

Depends on the company. My first job, we had a dedicated library, so getting articles wasn't a problem. My next job, I had to sneak into the local university library to get my fix. Now, we get the major journals. But for more specialized fields, I'll either hoof it to the local science and technology library, or I'll bomb about online reading abstracts, then contact the PI directly for a copy if I think it has merit (and many times, PIs have pdf's available on their homepages).

Also, excellent avatar. ;-)

(Reply to this)(Thread)

	luciddork 2008-05-14 07:14 pm UTC (link)
	Yourself as well. =D Checking out the PIs is a good idea, I hadn't thought of that. Thanks! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	theroundbottom 2008-05-14 06:30 pm UTC (link)
	usually the bigger the company, the more journal subscriptions it can afford. some of the biggest companies can even get more extensive subscriptions than universities -- when i worked at pfizer, i would be able to access articles that i couldn't get at UCSD ... even though they're right across the street. :) (Reply to this)(Thread)

	luciddork 2008-05-14 07:16 pm UTC (link)
	I imagine Pfizer would. =p Sadly, I do not think I will be able to jump into work with one of the big companies until I get a year or three of experience under my belt. (Reply to this)(Parent)

lincolnparadox
2008-05-14 06:30 pm UTC (link)

Push comes to shove, if your company doesn't have access, take a one credit online course from your old university. Something pass-fail that would be easy for you. As a student, you will have off-site access to their subscriptions when you log into the library/university server and you can even use interlibrary loan.

Depending on your school's tuition, it should be cheaper than getting online access or buying pdfs piecemeal all year.

(Reply to this)

	narfenugen 2008-05-14 07:02 pm UTC (link)
	The state of Alaska provides online journal access through Ebsco and some other databases to all residents. Maybe you should check to see if your state has a library webpage. (Reply to this)

	ravenofdreams 2008-05-14 07:23 pm UTC (link)
	All the private-company types I know mooch journal access from uni neighbors. But then, they're all little companies that work very closely with said uni. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	technolope 2008-05-15 02:07 am UTC (link)
	Ditto: small company, journals are too expensive, so whenever I need papers I will usually e-mail the author and ask for a PDF. Barring that, I walk into the MIT engineering library like I own the place. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	rxrfrx 2008-05-15 01:26 am UTC (link)
	Small biotech: locate the office close to a university so you can walk over there when necessary (i.e. constantly). Not a great solution. Also, get a paper subscription to ~5 of the most relevant journals, which didn't help all that much and took up a lot of space. (Reply to this)

	shamebear 2008-05-16 08:10 am UTC (link)
	offsite access to journals for students are provided by making your computer look like it's inside the university network. this may be accomplished in more than one way. While SSH usually depends on your student username and password, a cache server may have a fixed username and password that dosn't change that often. That's how I get my paper-fix :-) (Reply to this)

	immorethanme 2008-05-19 06:25 pm UTC (link)
	My undergraduate university still hasn't deleted my log in info so I still have access to their VPN. Hopefully they'll NEVER delete me knocks on wood (Reply to this)

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