Skip to Main Content

Research and teaching

Canvas: Linking to articles

As a rule, it is not allowed to place the full text of journal articles (in PDF or other formats) on a course website in Canvas. These rules apply to databases subscribed to by LIRU and articles in open access should be handled in the same way.

Students should be referred directly to journal articles in the database which stores them. Therefore a LINK TO THE ARTICLE should be added on a course‘s website in Canvas, which allows the student to retrieve the article from the publisher or vendor.

A good way to locate the database which holds the journal containing the preferred article is by searching the library's journal list and then selecting either A or B as described below.

A: Use DOI (Document Object Identifier)

Many journal articles are allocated a so-called DOI number when they are published electronically. DOI numbers identify articles in the same way that ISBN numbers identify books, and these numbers never change. A DOI number is therefore a kind of ID number for electronic material.

  • A journal article has the DOI number 10.1016/j.actaastro.2012.07.025. The numbers preceding the slash ( / ) identify the publisher (in this case, Elsevier), and the second number sequence refers to a specific article in a specific journal. These numbers can be found in the journal collections of publishers, for example, ScienceDirect (Elsevier), SpringerLINK and Wiley.
  • Create a permanent link by adding the DOI number to the back of the address: http://dx.doi.org/ (follow the instructions)
    A permanent link to the electronic article above would therefore be: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2012.07.025

B: Use permanent links when they are available
Many journal collections allocate a permanent URL to their articles. These URLs should be used on the course websites because they do not change.