Can't get a paper? Here's what you do

Here at Pubget we get feedback every now and again from people who are sure they have access to a paper, but aren't able to see it. For example they'll do a search and one of the results will be a paper from Nature from 2004, and they're sure they have access to that, but instead all they see is (1) an abstract, (2) a cheery page that says to try the little "retry" button on the upper right, (3) a less cheery page from the publisher's website saying there was some kind of error, or, rarely, (4) the dreaded "404 Not Found" message. And they send us feedback asking what to do.

Well, here's what you do.

The first thing to try is the little "retry" button at the upper right. If you click that it'll flash for a second, and then about a second later the page will refresh. Nine times out of ten it'll refresh with your PDF; most of the rest of the time it'll give you back an abstract (read on). Why does this happen? Sometimes there's just no link yet; either the paper was just published, or else came out way back in like 1947. Other times papers get moved from somewhere proprietary to somewhere else (most often an open-access archive), and every so often that throws Pubget for a loop. Usually we realize it and so present to you that cheery page that says to try the retry button, but on those rare occasions that we don't, just know to try the retry button. This almost always fixes things (especially the dreaded "404 Not Found" message).

What if it doesn't fix things? Usually when it doesn't fix things, what you see is the abstract. What that means is Pubget has checked and is pretty sure it doesn't have access to that PDF. Sometimes we're wrong about that. For example, just recently Pubget thought that Harvard didn't have access to a journal called Cell Cycle, when in fact it did. You'll notice that after you try the "retry" button, it changes into a button that says "still a problem?" We've got error checking on our end that usually catches these things, but if there's still a problem, just click the "still a problem?" button and send us a quick note. And here's something important: please remember to include an email address, so we can get back to you! Otherwise, we've got no way of getting back to you to let you know we've fixed the problem (which we can generally do pretty fast).

Which reminds me: whoever-you-are, you'll be glad to know Cell Cycle at Harvard is fixed.

The other thing that can go wrong is there's a bad link somewhere. There are 20 million records out there, and while publishers usually do a pretty amazing job of making sure all the links work, every so often they don't. Sometimes we can provide a workaround, but only if you let us know. So thanks for letting us know!