Proxy Bookmarklet  

Google scholar searches scholarly materials (journals, conference papers, books, theses, etc) from a variety of sources, including an unknown number of scholarly publishers (e.g. Wiley, IEEE), University Presses (e.g. HighWire Press, MetaPress, Ingenta) , preprint and universities repositories (e.g. arXiv.org, RePEc)

In short, Google Scholar:

• attempts to provide a single search engine for scholarly literature
  Note: Not all results come from scholarly sources
• is good for quick research.
• may offer a number of versions of the same article depending on where it was found.
• search results may include links to full-text articles freely available on the Internet.
• may be weak on older material
• relevacny ranking favours articles that are well cited, which tends to be older
• many links take you to publishers' websites where access requires a subscriber login or you have to pay to view full-text.

When you search Google Scholar, it will often bring you to a publisher site or database site where you will be asked to pay because the site does not know you are from NUS and can access the article via NUS subscriptions.

There are two solutions

1) Turn on the  preferences in Google Scholar to indicate you are from NUS  (preferred)

2) Use the proxy bookmarklet (see below)

The first method is the official method, where Google scholar will try to figure out which article is available online via our subscriptions and indicate it by adding a "Find it! @ NUSLibraires".

The second method, requires that you click in through to the publisher site and apply the proxy to see if you have access. 

Both methods have weaknesess.

Method one occasionally fails to correctly, identity articles that we do have access to, so you can still try clicking in through to the article anyway to see if the proxy bookmarklet works. 

Method two occasionally fails to bring you to the full-text, while method one may work. 

Note: Besides using the proxy bookmarklet, NUS Libraries is now on Google's Library Link programme with build-in support for linking to full text. Both methods can be used together if desired to gain access to full text, but we recommend using the Library Links method as the default option.

Below are instructions on using the proxy bokmarklet  to access  full-text (via NUS Libraries’ subscription) from a Google scholar search result:

1. In the search example below, click on the required (highlighted) result from Google Scholar:
   
   

   

 
2.  You will be brought to JSTOR which is a database that NUS Libraries subscribes to. You are, however, unable to access full-text because you are not authenticated properly i.e. the JSTOR is unable to determine that you are genuinely coming from NUS Libraries:

 
3.  To gain access to full text, click on the "NUS Libraries Proxy Bookmarklet" menu  you have installed in your Browser toolbar/Bookmark/Favourites. You will be prompted to log-in if you have not done so during this browser session.

 
 
4.  Once this is correctly done, the full text should be available.