Compendex is considered a "citation" database, since it indexes and provides citations across all engineering literature, including all of VDOT's journal subscriptions with all publishers. Full-text is not always available, but the Engineering Village interface has features designed to lead you to VDOT's other subscriptions for full-text access whenever full text is available.
TIP: Click on the 
or the 
button!
In addition, Compendex increasingly has links to full-text resources that are available as "Open Access" articles or "Preprint" articles. FAQs in the next section explain these terms.
Clicking the "Full-text" button will help lead you to the full-text document, regardless of whether it is Open Access, a preprint or one of thousands of articles in another Library subscription database. In each case, your Compendex search results stay onscreen while a new browser window opens with your full text.
1. Open Access: 4.4 million open access items are available for "free, immediate, online availability...coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment." (Source: SPARC) To get a document click "Full text"
2. Preprint articles: 850,000 preprint articles (manuscripts prepared for publication that get shared prior to full peer review) are also in Compendex. For more on this topic see our Preprint FAQ. To get a document click "Full text"
3. VDOT Subscription Journals: More than 500,000 articles from engineering/technical journals held by the library are in Compendex, including: ASCE journals, ICE journals and dozens more. To get a document click "Full text"
4. Knovel: About 2,800 eBooks available in VDOT's Knovel subscription are now accessible via Compendex. To get to one click "View in Knovel"
Don't give up if Compendex leads you to a paywall or any other dead end that does not result in full-text!
For any item you find in Compendex that does not have a "Full text" button (or the button does not connect you to the full text as you had hoped), simply copy the citation details and submit them in a request to the Library using this ILL and Document Delivery Request Form. Delivery may take 1-2 weeks, but is often much faster and we have an amazing fulfillment rate!
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