Bookmarklet to localize a webpage of a journal paper

by Daniel C. Suo, Teng Li and Zhigang Suo

Most journals offer the title, authors and abstract of each paper online for free.  This information is a foundation for many services.  For example, Teng has been urging us to adopt CiteUlike, a free social bookmarking website created by Richard Cameron for managing papers.  You can explore remarkable functionalities of CiteUlike by playing with Zhigang's Watchlist.  As another example, RSS readers allow us to subscribe to abstracts of papers from some of the best journals.  These services, however, usually do not allow you to view full papers.  Here we describe a solution to this problem.

Say we are on the website of a Nature paper: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v428/n6986/abs/nature02498.html.  Upon clicking the button "Full Paper" or "PDF", we land on another webpage asking us to buy the paper, even though Harvard University subscribes to Nature.  Annoyed, we reload the website of Nature via Harvard University proxy server, search for the paper, and then download the paper.

Teng noticed that, for a given paper, its free webpage and its Harvard-proxy webpage differ only by a string ".ezp1.harvard.edu". He inserted the string ".ezp1.harvard.edu" into the above URL, namely, http://www.nature.com.ezp1.harvard.edu/nature/journal/v428/n6986/abs/nature02498.html.  This new URL leads to a webpage where he could download the paper.  ("ezp" stands for EZproxy, a software used by libraries in nearly 50 countries to extend web-based licensed databases to remote users. See a complete list of institutions that have purchased EZproxy.)

Daniel has automated the above trick by creating a bookmarklet, with the following javascript code:

javascript:re=/(https?\:\/\/\w+([-]?\w+)*\.\w+([-]?\w+)*(\.\w{2,4})+)/;if(re.test(location.href)==true){url=RegExp.$1;temp=new%20String(location.href);results=temp.replace(re,url+%22.ezp1.harvard.edu%22);void(window.open(results))}

This bookmarklet works for Harvard libraries. You can try to modify this code for your own institution by substituting ".ezp1.harvard.edu" with the proper string for your institution proxy server. (Can't find the string? Ask your librarians for help.)

To add the bookmarklet to your browser, take the following steps:

1. Copy the above javascript code (the whole line in green).
   
2. Bookmark any webpage.  For example, you can bookmark the current webpage.
   
3. Right click the bookmark and then click "Properties".  You will see a pop-up window shown below, depending on your browser.
4. Paste the javascript into Location.
5. Edit the Name of the Bookmarklet.  For example, call it PaperFetch.
   

In Firefox:


In Internet Explorer 6:


Now, go to the original Nature paper and then click the bookmarklet. You should be able to download the paper with two clicks.  Once you have downloaded the paper, you can then upload the PDF file to the corresponding item in your personal CiteULike library. (Sorry, we haven't found a shortcut for this step.  Yet another project for Daniel.)  Now you have the full access to the paper from anywhere.

If you have any difficulty in modifying the javascript code for your own institution, please send an email to dsuo@fas.harvard.edu .  In your message, please include the URL of the abstract page of above Nature paper viewed in your institution, i.e., the webpage that does allow you to download the full paper.

A list of Ezproxy server strings to be substituted in the javascript code

Other helpful bookmarklets
LibraryLookup Bookmarklets
New York Times permanent link generator