Getting the most out of SFX

Have you ever searched for a journal article and found a graphic that says “SFX”? Did you wonder what it was? Well, SFX connects citations from one Sauk database to another Sauk database via a link resolver. That way you do not have to search each and every database to locate your full text article; in a sense SFX does that for you. To learn more about SFX, click below.

How SFX works: (For our purposes, information results will be categorized as good information or best information.) When you click on the SFX button and see “Check SFX for full text”; the link resolver is searching other databases owned by Sauk that have the same journal title and article. If the data matches perfectly, the full text article will be found. (This is the best information.)

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Here is an example of an SFX connection which found the full text article in another database:


We started from Sauk’s EBSCOhost database and chose CINAHL Plus with full text:



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Next, we typed in head injury AND football and clicked on search. (AND was capitalized because it is a Boolean operator)

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Entries for results appeared on our screen. We clicked “Check SFX for full text” to see if SFX had matched all the information and located the article.


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In this case, SFX  matched the information to a source or journal within Gale’s Academic OneFile. We did not know if SFX could match the exact year, volume, and issue that we needed. We clicked “Full text may be available in” to see if SFX would be able to locate an exact match with data from the article.

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Notice that SFX linked EBSCOHOST to ACADEMIC ONEFILE.

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We clicked on the paper graphic to open.


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Our article was located. Locating the full text article is the best possible outcome and so is the best information.

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Stay tuned for part 2 of SFX - (the good information).