Overview
The LibKey.io application is not only a destination platform for doing quick and easy DOI and PMID lookups but is also a powerful URL linking syntax for navigating to full text for nearly 1,000 organizations and more than 10 Million researchers worldwide. Using LibKey.io in your application allows you to improve the user experience over simply linking to PubMed abstracts (and hoping for a PubMed Central OA link to be available) or linking by DOI to a publisher site. Both of these strategies suffer from common fragilities:
If the article in question requires authentication and seamless IP authentication is not available, the user will face a paywall for something they may actually have entitlements for through their organization but may not be familiar with how to properly navigate through the correct portals to unlock access.
The user may also NOT have access even through their organization, but it turns out that this paper is actually open access in either final or pre-print form at a different location than the DOI or PMID resolution may direct them. This can include everything from aggregated sources such as ProQuest, EBSCO or OVID to pre-print repositories, PubMed Central and more!
The user may still have no options but their organization would gladly supply the article with a simple ILL request, but the user may be unaware of this resource or how to use it. Even if they are aware, pulling that resource up after hitting a dead end becomes a chore of copy/pasting metadata into various forms.
LibKey.io solves all of these issues by presenting a straightforward path for users and is a free resource for 3rd-party developers to use! We request that you contact us to let us know of your use of the resource so we can be sure to include you on our communications for upcoming developments/changes to the service in the future.
Syntax overview/options and workflow
The syntax is very simple:https://libkey.io/[DOI or PMID]
The LibKey application automatically determines if