The Alternatives feature helps patrons to access digital resources easily in alternative ways. This feature consists of three ways of accessing resources: Article Alternatives, eBooks Alternatives, Open Access Alternatives.
When a patron ends up at a paywall during their research, Library Alternatives will kick in and search for an alternative way for the patrons to access the research materials. Read here for more information.
How does it work?
Article Alternatives
For Article Alternatives, our extension will take the DOIs and ISSN (article), send the data to Crossref and extract the metadata to search against your Holdings Information (licensed locations of the articles).
This means your Holding Information is queried with the Link Resolver via an Open URL request. Hence, the extension will provide a location for the resource. Here is an example of the Open URL Request result.
eBook Alternatives
For eBooks Alternatives, our extension will take the DOIs (if available) or ISBNs, send the DOI data to Crossref and extract the metadata to search against your Holdings Information (licensed locations of the eBooks).
If the dashboard has been set up print books search integration, you will also see a hyperlink underneath Check for Print. If you click the hyperlink, you will be taken to the libary discovery page, with a result searching for this book in print version.
Open Access Alternatives
Open Access Article Alternatives
When the extension cannot find a full text location within your library holdings, then we will use our API to look for an Open Access article with the same DOIs/ISSNs from Unpaywall and Core.ac.uk as the next step.
In the occasions where there is no Open Access option available, then we will show the Interlibrary Loan (ILL) / Document Delivery System (DDS) option which we will redirect to your Interlibrary loan form.
Open Access eBooks Alternatives
When the extension cannot find a licensed location within your library holdings, then we will search the ISBN against the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB).
In the occasions where there is no Open Access option available, we will show the Interlibrary Loan (ILL) / Document Delivery System (DDS) option which we will redirect to your Interlibrary loan form.