Say that you've come across a medical journal article in a list of references, the title of which looks to be supportive to your important medical case, and you want it. So how do you go about getting a copy? If you're lucky, the article might be free for the taking, linked to a PubMed or Google Scholar citation. And know that the links in PubMed to free journal articles are not complete. Occasionally clicking on the link from a PubMed citation to a publisher's Website will give you the pleasant surprise of producing your desired article free of charge, even though PubMed didn't indicate this happy fact. Another way of locating your desired article is to Google the name of the source journal in quotes, for example, "American Family Physician", which should take you to the publisher's Website. You would find in this case that the contents of American Family Physician from 1998 to twenty-four months ago are downloadable free.

When searching for a medical journal article at a publisher's Website, one often learns that a subscription to the journal is required. Shucks! Many publishers, however, offer pay-per-view access to their journals' contents. Depending on the publisher, greedy or not, the prices for these pay-per-view articles range from very reasonable to exorbitant.