Full text access to journals on the net

Vinay Gopalani

 Consultant Dermatologist, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Correspondence Address:
Vinay Gopalani
#4/61, Kamdhenu, Hari Om Nagar, Mulund (East), Mumbai-400081
India

Journals play a very important role for continuing medical education for dermatologists. While textbooks lay the foundation of medical understanding and practice, journals provide the most recent findings of clinical trials and research, multiple viewpoints on controversial topics, and information on current events, and new techniques.

Until lately, the problem was the limited access to these journals, most of them being available only in the premium teaching institutes. This problem has now been solved by the availability of online versions of most journals. This is further aided by the open access movement, which encourages free access to medical information throughout the world without economic hindrances. This would enable scientists, librarians, publishers, and entrepreneurs to develop innovative ways to explore and use the world′s treasury of scientific ideas and discoveries. More information about the movement is available at this site: http://www.plos.org/about/openaccess.html.

This article lists journal sites into three groups. The first is where the entire dermatology journal (current and/or back dated issues) is available free to view. The second is where abstracts are available free but access to the full text requires paid subscription. The third group is of non-dermatology journals.

Dermatology journals offering free full text access:

http://www.mf.uni-lj.si/acta-apa/index.html: Presently, the current issue (vol 14, no 3 issue of 2005) is available online at the Acta Dermatovenerologica web site. Back issues until the year 2000 can also be accessed.

http://www.masson.fr/masson/portal/portal: The Annales de Dermatologie et de Vιnιrιologie web site is in French, but a hyperlink (′free selection in English′) give access to the English version of the journal from January 1998 to March 2003.

http://www.aidsonline.com: At this site of the official journal of the International AIDS Society, articles older than 12 months can be freely accessed. However, full text access to more recent issues of AIDS Online requires subscription.

http://www.leprosy-review.org.uk/: Issues of Leprosy Review from 2000 onwards and a few articles from earlier issues, until 1997, are available.

http://www.leprosyjournal.org: All issues of the International Journal of Leprosy and Other Mycobacterial Diseases are available from 2003 onwards.

http://sti.bmjjournals.com/: Sexually Transmitted Infections has a free access policy to certain countries and to tsunami affected ones. Abstracts can be accessed from 1975 onwards, and the complete text from 1998 onwards.

http://www.ijdvl.com: The official publication of the Indian Association of Dermatologists, Venereologists and Leprologists, the Indian Journal of Dermatology, Venereology and Leprology is a bimonthly journal that offers full text articles from mid-2000 and abstracts from 1961 onwards.

http://dermatology.cdlib.org/: The Dermatology Online Journal is the first solely online journal indexed by MEDLINE.

http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcdermatol: This is another open access peer reviewed online journal. The current as well as past issues can be accessed freely and completely.

Dermatology journals offering free access to abstracts but not to the full text:

http://archderm.ama-assn.org/: Archives of Dermatology

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/loi/ijd: International Journal of Dermatology (limited abstracts available for viewing)

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/loi/pde: Pediatric Dermatology (limited abstracts available for viewing)

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/loi/ajd: Australasian Journal of Dermatology (limited abstracts available for viewing)

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/loi/bjd: British Journal of Dermatology

http://www.cutis.com: Cutis

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/loi/jcd: Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology

www.karger.com/spp: Skin Pharmacology and Physiology (Only a few select issues are available in full)

www.e-ijd.org: Indian Journal of Dermatology, is a quarterly journal published by the West Bengal Branch of IADVL; abstracts of this journal are available on the net from the year 1995.

Non-dermatology journals with full text access

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/: British Medical Journal is a weekly general medicine journal and provides free full text articles from January 1994 onwards.

http://content.nejm.org/: The New England Journal of Medicine is a weekly general medical journal. Indian physicians have free access to the past and present contents. The dermatology section, accessed by a link that reads ′topic collections′, has some interesting articles.

http://jama.ama-assn.org/: The weekly Journal of the American Medical Association provides free access to research articles, review articles, comments and editorials 6 months after publication. Full text and abstracts are available from 1998 onwards.

http://www.annals.org/: The Annals of Internal Medicine has free full text access available from 1993.

http://www.jpgmonline.com/: Journal of Postgraduate Medicine is an indexed quarterly medical journal published by the Staff Society of Seth G. S. Medical College and K. E. M. Hospital, Mumbai, India. Free full text of all articles is available from 1980.

http://pharmrev.aspetjournals.org/: Pharmacological Reviews is a quarterly journal. Issues older than one year can be freely accessed.

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JID/journal/index.html: All articles from the Journal of Infectious Diseases from November 1998 onwards are available up to a year older than the print issue.

http://pmj.bmjjournals.com/: The Postgraduate Medical Journal has full text access from 1999 onwards.

http://icmr.nic.in/ijmr/ijmr.htm: The Indian Journal of Medical Research, one of the oldest journals in India, is published monthly in two volumes. Archives are available from 2003 onwards.

http://www.ijp-online.com: The Indian Journal of Pharmacology is published six times in a year. Issues from 2000 till date can be accessed

Other than these, a few sites provide a mixed bag of content:

http://www.freemedicaljournals.com/: This is a site promoted by Flying Publisher (http://www. flyingpublisher.com/). Flying Publisher is dedicated to free access to medical information throughout the world. The site lists 1450 journals that can be accessed freely.

http://medind.nic.in/index.shtml: This is the medIND - biomedical journals from India website. This Department of Information Technology, Govt. of India web site provides online access to the full text of 37 Indian biomedical periodicals.

http://www.medscape.com/librarydirectory/dermatology: This site presents selected full text articles from various journals.

http://dermatology.jwatch.org/: Journal Watch Dermatology keeps clinicians up to date on the most important articles. It has a few full text articles.

http://www.medbioworld.com/index.html: Medbioworld is the largest medical and bioscience resource directory on the Internet. It lists more than 80 dermatology journals in the resources section.

Enjoy reading!

(This list is not all-inclusive, nor are the journals ranked. Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, no guarantee can be made of a site′s availability.)