Q. How do I access the full text of journal articles from links obtained from external websites such as Google or from links given by friends?

If you are looking for articles found via Google Scholar, please refer to this faq instead.

If you are looking for articles found via Pubmed, please refer to this faq instead.

When you click on a Google result, it will often bring you to a vendor or publisher's site, where you will be asked to pay to access the full-text of an article. Similarly, direct links to online articles might have the same problem.

As you are not coming directly from the NUS Libraries' portal, the site does not know you have access via subscriptions from NUS.

You can of course, go back to our library portal and access the database or journal from there, but there's a faster way to authenticate and access the article directly.

This involves adding the proxy stem to the url. One way of doing so is to use the proxy bookmarklet. 

For more details, see the following page on proxy bookmarklet.

Note: NUS Libraries, does not have subscription to every online article, for every year, for every vendor. E.g. Generally access to articles from Wiley works from 1997 onwards etc.  If this method fails you will have to check the library catalogue to see if there is access via another online source or if a print copy is available. 

Another limitation is the proxy bookmarklet does not work on all databases even if the library has access, for details.