PDF retrieval with OpenAthens

sdspieg
Just a question - is there a way now to retrieve pdfs through one's own library when authenticated through openathens. Either through "find available pdf" or when importing through some translator? I'm asking because our library shifted from proxies to openathens, and now the pdfs do not always retrieve from, for instance, EBSCO Academic Search UIltimate. If you want an examples, please see here (not sure whether this will work for you).
  • adamsmith
    I thought openathens would work about as reliably as web proxy, i.e. typically from translators and not at all for find available PDF -- have you tried on some simpler pages than EBSCO (which is pretty wonky in general) to see if it does?
  • sdspieg

    So here's an example from JSTOR (not sure whether that's simpler than EBSCO or not). So I have an item that was downloaded from Google Scholar with this stable URL. I am on my university's VPN, and am also logged onto the JSTOR website through Athens. I've accepted JSTOR's terms and conditions, an error message that still pops up all the time despite the fact that I'm logged in and prevents the Zotero translator to work properly if not accepted. Since I did accept, entering that URL in my browser works fine, and the translator also nicely retrieves the pdf. But when I try 'Find availabe pdfs', it gives me the much-hated red crosssmile. Also when I try to find the DOI, it doesn't find it.

    But so SHOULD Zotero be able to find the pdf through 'Find available pdfs', or is that only for Unpaywall. And if the latter is the case, would it be possible to make that functionality possible - to, if an item has a DOI or a URL, retrieve the pdf from our university's online content?

    Thanks.

  • adamsmith
    But so SHOULD Zotero be able to find the pdf through 'Find available pdfs', or is that only for Unpaywall.
    Zotero should be able to find any PDFs you have access to on your current connection without any additional authentication of any kind in your browser. So not just Unpaywall but also institutional subscriptions as long as access is handled by IP range and your computer is recognized as belonging to that IP range.
    Not sure if your VPN does that -- what universities label VPN differs somewhat. If it does, it's still possible that JSTOR doesn't work because of the accept conditions thing; I haven't tested. If that's the case, it'd probably be harder to fix.
  • sdspieg
    edited April 12, 2020
    Just updating. This is working now (from behind the VPN) - to some extent. Out of 100 I just experimented with, it retrieved 56. And there were at least a few non-retrieved ones that I was still able to retrieve manually. If you're interested, I can dig a bit deeper and report back
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