Finding Full Text with EndNote Desktop
EndNote Desktop, available for purchase through UC Davis’ On TheHub, has the ability to search for full text journal articles and conference papers which you have access to through the UC Davis library subscriptions and/or that are freely available on the Internet to attach to your existing references.
To Setup:
- Click on Edit > Preferences (or EndNote X_ > Preferences on Mac)
- Select “Find Full Text” in the left-hand column
- Check the “PubMed LinkOut” box (all boxes will now be checked)
- Insert the following OpenURL Path: https://search.library.ucdavis.edu/openurl/01UCD_INST/01UCD_INST:UCD?
- Click “Apply”
- Select “PDF Handling” in the left-hand column
- Check the “Custom” box under PDF Auto Renaming Options
- Choose “Record Number”, then “Author”, then “Year”
- Click “OK”

To run “Find Full Text” in EndNote:
- Turn on the UC Davis Library VPN (if not connected to the campus network)
- Select (highlight) the references you would like EndNote to try and find PDFs for (limited to 250 records at a time)
- Click References > Find Full Text > Find Full Text
- EndNote Find Full Text copyright and usage notice will pop up
- Click OK
- You will see the progress of the search on the left (in the Groups pane) at the bottom
While this feature works quite well, it is not perfect and may not find everything!
To create a folder of PDFs from EndNote:
- Create a new, empty folder on your Desktop
- Open your EndNote Library’s .Data file
- Open the folder labeled PDF (EndNote automatically stores PDFs in individual folders within the .Data file)
- Search for type:.pdf
- Select all PDFs
- Copy & Paste selected PDFs into your new folder
Please refer EndNote’s Advanced Citation Management Guide for videos and additional information.
Finding Full Text with Zotero
Zotero, freely available through Zotero.org, has the ability to search for full text journal articles and conference papers which you have access to through the UC Davis library subscriptions and/or that are freely available on the Internet to attach to your existing references. It can also automatically retrieve PDFs.
To run “Find Available PDFs” in Zotero:
- Turn on the UC Davis Library VPN (if not connected to the campus network)
- Select (highlight) the references for which you would like Zotero to try and find the PDFs
- Right-click those references and select “Find Available PDFs”
- You will see the progress of the search (green check for PDFs found, red “X” for those that are not)
While this feature works well, it is not perfect and may not find everything!

PDFs Not Auto-retrieving?
Reasons why “Full-Text” might not be found using EndNote or Zotero:
- Working from off campus and UC Davis Library VPN has not been activated
- Article does not have a DOI (Digital Object Identifier)
- Article is too old to have a PDF available
- Article is too new and the PDF link is not yet available
- Journal has embargoed current articles
- UC Davis Library does not have a subscription to the journal and there is no free access
- Too many users are already in a journal with limited access
- Publisher’s website or third-party aggregator does not support or allow this capability
- Journal handles letters, editorials, correspondence differently, making it difficult to find a citation
If an article wasn’t automatically retrieved, search your favorite database or the Library’s Catalog to find it. You can add individual PDFs to your reference management tool. If an article isn’t available online, you can request it through the Library’s Interlibrary Loan Service.