Skip to Main Content
site header image

Linking To Library Electronic Resources: Links to Journal Articles & Other Databases

NYU Law Faculty are able to access many electronic resources for articles, cases, statutes, etc. This guide describes how to create links to these resources for your students in your Brightspace page.

Overview

There are two steps to providing a link to resources for your students:

Step one: locate the journal article

Step two: generate a link to the resource

The column on the left-hand side provides instructions for step one, locating the article. The column on the right-hand side provides instructions for step two, generating a link. 

Step One: Locating Journal Articles

The first step in providing links to library resources for students is to find the resource yourself before generating a link. Actually finding a resource will involve different steps depending on what kind of resource you want to provide a link for. The boxes below will provide step-by-step instructions for locating online versions of various types of resources.

Journal articles can be found online in a variety of databases that you have access to as a member of the NYU Law community. You can search for articles in a number of ways, including: (1) directly, by citation and (2) searching on search engines like Google Scholar or law databases like HeinOnline, Lexis & Westlaw.

We highly recommend first checking to see if the article is available to read for free through an open access source like SSRN, a journal's website, or a law school's institutional repository. You should also check the Bobst Library if you cannot locate a resource using the NYU Law Library's resources.

Looking for an Open Access Version or Articles Hosted on Publisher Platforms

After years of activism around open access to scholarly works, many recent articles may be available for free online. 

Go to Google or Google Scholar, and search for the title of the work, in quotations, and the author's name. Results, if any, will likely be from SSRN, the journal's website, and/or the law school's website. When locating articles via Google Scholar, selecting 'All (X) versions' in the entry will generate a list of platforms providing access to the article, including open access repositories and commercial publishers where available.

After you have located the article, proceed to step two, on the right side of this page.

A screenshot of the Google Scholar search engine, with the search terms "'Taking Intellectual Property into Their Own Hands' amy adler" in the search box.

A screenshot of a search result entry on Google Scholar. In this entry, there are several hyperlinks at the bottom of the entry. One of them is labelled "All 8 versions" and is highlighted with a red rectangular box for emphasis.

Searching by Citation

1. Go to the Julius Catalog, then select "Find Articles by Citation" underneath the Find Journals & Articles heading. 

Screenshot of the NYU Law Library Julius catalog. Under the search box for "Find Journals & Articles" located in the middle of the page, there is a hyperlink labelled "Find Articles by Citation." This is highlighted with a red rectangular box for emphasis.

2. Enter the information from your citation. You must include the journal name. Any other information you include will help the search. After you have entered the information, click "look up." You should be brought to a page with a list of all of the places you can access the article.

3. Click the link to the article on whichever platform you prefer. You may be prompted to log in with your NetID before viewing the resource. After you have located the article, proceed to step two, on the right side of this page.

Searching on HeinOnline, Westlaw or Lexis

HeinOnline, Westlaw and Lexis provide access to many law review articles. For Westlaw and Lexis, these articles typically are not available as PDFs, so other versions of an article (including freely available articles and those in other law library databases, like HeinOnline) may be preferable.

1. Log into the database.

2. Search for the title of the article, in quotes, in the main search bar. After you have located the article, proceed to step two, on the right side of this page.

Checking the Bobst Library

The NYU Bobst Library has access to articles and databases, especially non-legal titles, that the law library does not. If your journal search in the Julius catalog turns up no results, check the Bobst catalog, Bobcat:

1. Go to the Bobst library's website, library.nyu.edu.

2. Either:

  • Enter the title of the article into the main search bar, OR
  • Select the search by citation tool, linked below the main search bar, OR

3. After you have located the article, proceed to step two, on the right side of this page.

Step Two: Creating a Link to a Journal Article

The steps for creating a link to an article on a database vary by database. Below are some general principles followed by specific instructions for the more popular databases. If you have trouble generating a link on a database not outlined below, please reach out to the reference librarians at LawLibRef@mercury.law.nyu.edu.

General Instructions

Note: do not follow these steps for resources on Westlaw, Lexis, or Bloomberg which require individual law school ID logins. These general instructions are to be used for other databases, like HeinOnline, JSTOR, and ProQuest which have NYU-wide IP access. 

1. Find the permalink to the article on the database.* If a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) link is available, it is usually advisable to use that.

2. Paste the link to the resource into the document or materials you are providing to your students.

3. Copy and paste the following link in front of the link you just created. There should be no space in between the two links. This is called a prefix or proxy URL. It will anyone who is off-campus to log in with their NetID and password before they can view the materials. (Note: This is no longer necessary for HeinOnline, which has an option that comes with the proxy already appended.)

http://proxy.library.nyu.edu/login?url=

4. This entire link - the proxy URL and the link to the resource - is what your students need to view the resources. You can copy it and add it as a hyperlink in your document or Brightspace, or leave it as is. 

*See note in the troubleshooting box, below.

Generating a Link to HeinOnline

1. Click the link icon in the toolbar above the resource. 

Depicts a screenshot of a law review journal article from the New York University Law Review on the HeinOnline platform. On this webpage, there are several icons in a row above the PDF image of the journal article. One of the icons is a paper clip, which has been circled in red for emphasis. This paper clip icon allows one to create a stable hyperlink to the HeinOnline resource.

2. Copy the permanent link that appears under the label "Access Through Your Institution" as it contains a proxied URL.

Screenshot of the HeinOnline permanent link to a law review article. It depicts a grey box entitled "Permanent Link to This Page:", and two hyperlinks labelled "General Use" and "Access Through Your Institution." The "Access Through Your Institution" label and its respective hyperlink has been emphasized with a red rectangular box.

3. Paste the permanent link into your document.

Generating a Link to JSTOR

1. On the left side of the page, there will be a Stable Url. Copy the URL.

Depicts a journal article from the Columbia Law Review on the JSTOR website. On the middle left of the webpage, there is a label "Stable URL" along with a Question mark enclosed with a circle. Below this label is a hyperlink to the stable URL on JSTOR. This label and its hyperlink have been highlighted for emphasis with a red rectangular box.

2. Paste the URL into your document.

3. Copy and paste the following link in front of the link you just created. There should be no space in between the two links. This is called a prefix or proxy URL. It will anyone who is off-campus to log in with their NetID and password before they can view the materials. 

http://proxy.library.nyu.edu/login?url=

4. This entire link - the proxy URL and the link to the resource - is what your students need to view the resources. You can copy it and add it as a hyperlink in your document, or leave it as is. 

Generating a Link to ProQuest Central

Note: This also applies to other ProQuest databases such as Supreme Court Insight and Regulatory Insight.

1. Click the circle that says Copy URL on the left side of the screen. In certain databases, there may be some variation such as 'Permalink' on Regulatory Insight.

Snapshot of small section of ProQuest database for each resource. It depicts five icons, with the middle icon being a paperclip with the label "Copy URL." This icon and label have been circled in red for emphasis.Snapshot of the options available on the ProQuest database. Below a large rectangular box entitled "Download PDF" with a download icon, there are 3 options, Email, Print and Permalink, each with their own visual icons. The third option, Permalink, is accompanied with a paperclip icon, and is emphasized in red with a rectangular box.

2. Paste this link into the document or resource you will give to your students. You do not need to append any additional proxies. 

Generating a Link to SSRN

1. Click the link button listed on the right side, next to where it says Share. You may copy either the URL or DOI, though a DOI is usually recommended.

A snapshot of a portion of a record the SSRN platform. On the top right of the image, there is a paperclip icon that is being circled in red for emphasis. This icon, upon being clicked on, opens up a box entitled "Permalink" which is depicted in this screenshot. The Permalink box contains a message "Using these links will ensure access to this page indefinitely," followed by a hyperlink to the URL and the DOI of the resource. Each URL has a 'Copy URL' and 'Copy DOI' button next to it.

2. Copy the URL and paste into your document. 

 

Troubleshooting

Some databases incorporate a proxy link in the middle of a permalink. These links are potentially unstable, meaning they might not work when students click on them. When this happens, you need to remove the proxy link from the middle of the permalink and then insert the proxy link above in front of your new link to make a more stable link. For example:

The link https://doi-org.proxy.library.nyu.edu/10.1080/00048408312350011 is potentially unstable. To create a more stable link, you need to ensure that the proxy URL precedes the permalink:

  1. Copy and paste the proxy URL from the database.
  2. Attempt to gather the item's permalink without the proxy incorporated within it. You might try logging out of NYU Home and running an internet search for the article title to try to find the permalink (or DOI). In this case, it is: https://doi.org/10.1080/00048408312350011. Alternatively, you can analyze the URL and attempt to manually adjust the link to determine the permalink. In this case, you would copy both the beginning of the link (https://doi-org/) AND the numbers after the .edu portion of the link, and paste immediately after the doi.org/ portion, leaving out the proxy link from the middle of the URL. 

In the example above, the hyperlink, after being edited, would appear as follows: http://proxy.library.nyu.edu/login?url=https://doi.org/10.1080/00048408312350011. 

If you have questions or concerns about this process, please reach out to the reference librarians at LawLibRef@mercury.law.nyu.edu.