How to access international biomedical journals in Pakistan?

The article will describe few ways of accessing information from world renowned biomedical journals in Pakistan

Digital Library by Higher Education Commission of Pakistan:

First I will talk specifically about Pakistan. Here the first place to go to is the Digital Library created by Higher Education Commission of Pakistan. The website can be accessed at:

URL:       http://www.digitallibrary.edu.pk

 

It introduces itself as

HEC National Digital Library (DL) is a programme to provide researchers within public and private universities in Pakistan and non-profit research and development organizations with access to international scholarly literature based on electronic (online) delivery, providing access to high quality, peer-reviewed journals, databases, articles and e-Books across a wide range of disciplines. DL has launched ebrary and McGraw Hill Collections to provide around 50,000 online books in addition to more than 23,000 journals that have been made available through the Digital Library Programme. The e-books support programme will allow researchers to access most of the important text and reference books electronically in a variety of subject areas.

How it Works:

While you are in your institution, using the institution’s computer network, go to the above site and find the name of your institution. Click on the resources offered, e.g., springerlink etc and you will have free access to all the resources by that website.

The screenshot below shows the Resources available for King Edward Medical University, Lahore:

Similarly the resources are available for almost every recognized institution in Pakistan like King Edward Medical University,  Allama Iqbal Medical College etc. To see the complete list go to:

URL:       http://www.digitallibrary.edu.pk/institutes.php

 

Pros:

·         You can read, download, reference and other things for free

Cons:

·         The computers in institution are often slow and sometimes internet is slow as well, so it can be a slow process.

·         The resources provided by Digital Library cannot be accessed from home.

PUBMED

U.S. National Library of Medicine

National Health Institutes

A 3^rd and most used option is through Pubmed. Although not everything in Pubmed is free, but we can access free articles here as well.

Look at these screenshots to learn:

Let’s say you have typed “Carcinoid and Appendicitis” in the search box, there are 207 results as shown below in the big black rectangle with arrow next to it, there are 207 total results and there are 22 full free text articles, when we click Free full text, only free articles are shown on left hand side and when we click any one of them, we get this:

As shown in the screenshot, the abstract of the first article is shown, as I clicked on the first article. There is a button pointed by an arrow. Actually this button is the place from where you can read or download full text of the article, when we click it we get:

The article is there as well as the link to Full PDF, which you can click upon to download. When you click Full PDF you get the PDF.

Do not forget to write references to these articles in your work. :)

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