SpringerLink access checker logic

Here’s the way the Access Checker works and categorizes Springer access categories.

The Checker checks in the order below. This means that presence of HTML that would trigger "Restricted access" message will return that message, even if there is also code on the page that would otherwise trigger return of "Full access"

As always, if you see problems or ways of improving this logic, I'm happy to hear about it. Just create a new Issue ticket using the "Issues" link above.

Table of Contents Restricted access Full Access Full access (probably) Reference work with access to PDF downloads Miscellaneous other patterns and messages Check access manually

Restricted access

If the page HTML code contains the following, the category is “Restricted access”:

viewType="Denial"

Full Access

For most ebooks there is a link that has one of the following in the HTML code, indicating the full text is downloadable (download whole book option):

viewType="Full text download"

viewType="Book pdf download

viewType="EPub download"

The access checker categorizes those as “Full access”

Full access (probably)

Full message returned: Full access (probably). Some chapters can be downloaded, but it appears the entire book cannot. May want to check manually.

Some works (not all of which are Reference works, if I recall correctly) have links with this in the HTML code:

viewType="Chapter pdf download

Those are ones where you can’t download the whole document, but you can download at least one individual chapter from it. However, the access checker has no way of telling if all chapters are downloadable or not.

For these, you might want to check them manually to ensure all or most of the actual content-bearing chapters are downloadable in full text.

Reference work with access to PDF downloads

Full message returned: Reference work with access to PDF downloads. May want to check manually, as we have discovered some reference work entry PDFs contain no full text content.

In some, the link has HTML coding including:

viewType="Reference work entry pdf download"

They behave largely like the previous category, except:

• I assume they are indeed Reference Works
• The links are present (for at least some entries), and PDFs indeed pop up with the links are clicked, but we ran across some where that PDF was BLANK or told the user to buy the book.
• Again, there's no way currently for the checker to calculate how many articles have PDF links vs. how many articles are in the reference work, or whether the PDFs actually contain any useful content.

To resolve these, you'll need to check them manually, ascertaining number of full text article/entry links vs. your expectations. Also check the PDFs linked to contain useful content.

Miscellaneous other patterns and messages

Read the following as: If page HTML contains this >>> Access checker result category

• DOI Not Found >>> DOI error
• <h1>Page not found<\/h1> >>> Page not found (404) error
• Bookshop, Wageningen >>> wageningenacademic.com
  • These DOI based URLs should be giving users the option to view the book on Springer or on this bookseller site, BUT are going directly to the bookseller site

Check access manually

If none of the above patterns are found in the page HTML, the Access Checker says:

Check access manually

If a large number of results come back with this message, it's likely that Springer has changed their platform interface in some way, which has affected the above logic. In this case, I need to redo the checker logic, so please let me know ASAP by creating a new Issue using the "Issues" link above.