Finding NHS eJournals and accessing full-text – step-by-step

All our NHS-subscribed journals are listed on the NHS Journals A-Z list. You can search the list to find out what journal titles we have, what holdings of full-text are available and where you can access them from.

Follow these quick steps to get to the full-text you need.

1. Start at the Health Library home page

All your NHS resources are available via the Health Library website, so it is worth familiarising yourself with the main sections. There are a number of different ways to go to the journals list. The quickest is to go to the website and click the Find option on the top menu.

Health Library home page

2. Select the Journals page from the Find section

You’ll find options for all the different resources we provide in the Find section. From the top menu bar select the Journals option.

Find section on the Health Library website

3. The Journals page

You have now reached the Journals page. Page down and you’ll see image tiles representing the different journal collections that we have.

Top of the Journals page

Each journal collection is represented by a tile and there are various actions that you can select for each collection. Select the option to log in to the NHS Journals A-Z list.

Image tiles representing the journal collections available at the Health Library

4. Log in to OpenAthens

You will need to log in to the list using your NHS Openathens username and password. By logging in you will see all the journal titles that have been subscribed by your NHS organisation. The list will be different for each organisation, so it is very important that you log in to get your full list.

The Health Library subscribes to a number of titles on your behalf and these are only presented if you have logged in.

Enter your NHS OpenAthens username and password and click the Sign In button.

Enter your OpenAthens username into the OpenAthens login screen

5. Search the A-Z list

You will know that you have logged into the A-Z list as your NHS OpenAthens username will appear in the top right-hand corner. (I’ve scratched mine out on the screen-shots).

The NHS Journals A-Z List search interface

You can now search the list for the journal title you are interested in. Enter your journal title into the search box. Select the search option: exact title, start of title, all words in title or ISSN. I find that Start of Title is the best option to use to find a specific journal title, but you can experiment to see what works for you. Remember that it is the journal title you search for, not the article title. Then click the Search button.

Search options for an example search for journal title New England Journal of Medicine

6. Your Search Results

If the journal title you have searched for is available in our collections then you will be presented with an entry in the search results. A number of options may be presented, depending on where we have sourced the journal from.

In this example I have searched for the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). The entry includes 4 options:

• A current subscription on the Ovid platform – a current subscription does not have an end date
• An embargoed subscription from the Health Research Premium database on the Proquest platform
• An embargoed subscription from Medline on the Proquest platform
• A print subscription, available in the Health Library covering 1984 to 2013

Entry example for the New England Journal of Medicine - showing the 4 options available

It is worth noting that our subscription may not be via the publisher’s website but via a database or other platform. These often offer us more economical subscriptions as opposed to subscribing to journals individually via their own publisher websites.

7. Viewing full-text

You will need to select the option where the holdings presented cover the year / volume / issue of the article that you are looking for. In this example I am going to select the current subscription by clicking on the Ovid link.

Select the option which covers the holdings you are looking for

8. View the Journal page on the selected platform

The link will take you to the journal page on the selected platform. Usually the platform will detect that you are already logged into OpenAthens. However sometimes you will need to log in again to be able to view the full-text – look for the OpenAthens link in the login options.

Journal page on the platform where the full-text holdings are available

You should be able to select the issue you are interested in or search for the article title that you need from the journal page.

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As you can see using the NHS Journals A-Z List not only tells you which journals you have access to but also which full-text holdings are available and how you can link to the full-text.

For more help accessing and using journals please see the support page on the Health Library website.