Evidence Synthesis Methods Interest Group

Hello, colleagues!

I received a question from a team working on an evidence synthesis project that I'm not sure how to answer. They're trying to streamline downloading the PDFs of articles for the full-text screening stage. They're working from a list of references they mined from relevant studies. These references have been entered into Excel, mostly without DOIs.

Is there any tool that can automate the PDF retrieval process? They believe Covidence and/or EndNote may, but we don't have access to either, so I can't test it. Zotero definitely won't do this, even via VPN, because "Find Available PDFs" doesn't go through our link resolver like Library Lookup does. I'm pretty sure it's also impossible in RefWorks, which is our other available citation management tool. They also asked about metagear, which is an R package, but I'm not familiar with that. Right now they're screening other articles in Hubmeta, but I don't see any indication that Hubmeta has this capability.

I'd be grateful for any help you can provide!

-Hilary

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Hilary Kraus
hilary.kraus@uconn.edu
Research Services Librarian
University of Connecticut
She/Her/Hers
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Hi Hilary,

I am one of the founders and managers of HubMeta. We completely understand the frustration of not having tools for automatic download of PDFs. We have lots of features request to be added to HubMeta and this one is certainly a recurring theme, which we have faced in our projects too. As you properly mentioned, EndNote has this capability if your list has DOIs, and it has a 40-60% success rate in automatically downloading PDFs based on our tests.  We are in the process of developing that feature in HubMeta, and we will be happy to share it once it is ready. It will not be tomorrow, but it is certainly in the works.

Best,


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Hadi Fariborzi
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Original Message:
Sent: Oct 21, 2022 01:57 PM
From: Hilary Kraus
Subject: tools for automating PDF downloads

Hello, colleagues!

I received a question from a team working on an evidence synthesis project that I'm not sure how to answer. They're trying to streamline downloading the PDFs of articles for the full-text screening stage. They're working from a list of references they mined from relevant studies. These references have been entered into Excel, mostly without DOIs.

Is there any tool that can automate the PDF retrieval process? They believe Covidence and/or EndNote may, but we don't have access to either, so I can't test it. Zotero definitely won't do this, even via VPN, because "Find Available PDFs" doesn't go through our link resolver like Library Lookup does. I'm pretty sure it's also impossible in RefWorks, which is our other available citation management tool. They also asked about metagear, which is an R package, but I'm not familiar with that. Right now they're screening other articles in Hubmeta, but I don't see any indication that Hubmeta has this capability.

I'd be grateful for any help you can provide!

-Hilary

------------------------------
Hilary Kraus
hilary.kraus@uconn.edu
Research Services Librarian
University of Connecticut
She/Her/Hers
------------------------------