We've enhanced EasySLR's PDF fetching capabilities by adding PubMed Central (PMC) Open Access as an additional trusted source for automatic full-text retrieval.
This improvement increases the number of articles for which EasySLR can automatically locate and attach PDFs, reducing the need for manual searching and uploads.
This enhancement is particularly beneficial for medical, healthcare, life sciences, and biology-related reviews, where a large number of publications are available through PubMed Central.
What's New?
EasySLR can now automatically search PubMed Central Open Access when retrieving full-text PDFs.
If an article has any of the following identifiers available:
DOI
PMID
PMCID
PubMed URL
PMC URL
EasySLR will automatically attempt to locate an open-access PDF available through PubMed Central and attach it to the article.
If Auto PDF Fetching is enabled, the entire process happens automatically in the background.
How Does It Work?
EasySLR now uses PubMed Central's infrastructure to intelligently retrieve article identifiers and identify available open-access PDFs.
The platform will:
Use available identifiers (DOI, PMID, PMCID, PubMed URL, or PMC URL)
Search the PubMed Central Open Access dataset
Detect valid PDF locations
Automatically fetch and attach the PDF to the corresponding citation
This significantly expands EasySLR's full-text retrieval coverage.
Why This Matters
Finding and attaching full-text PDFs is often one of the most time-consuming steps in evidence synthesis projects.
Review teams frequently spend substantial time:
Searching for missing PDFs
Downloading files manually
Matching PDFs to citations
Managing incomplete full-text libraries
By expanding EasySLR's retrieval sources, more articles can now be populated automatically, allowing reviewers to focus on screening and evidence synthesis rather than administrative tasks.
Key Benefits
Improved PDF Coverage
EasySLR can now retrieve additional PDFs that may not have been available through existing sources.
This increases the likelihood of obtaining full texts automatically.
Reduced Manual Effort
Spend less time searching for and uploading PDFs manually.
More citations will arrive with their full texts already attached.
Better Support for Healthcare & Life Sciences Reviews
This enhancement is especially valuable for:
Systematic Reviews
Rapid Reviews
Targeted Literature Reviews (TLRs)
Scoping Reviews
Evidence Mapping projects
within:
Healthcare
Life Sciences
Medicine
Biology
Clinical Research
where PubMed Central hosts a significant number of open-access publications.
Faster Progression to Full-Text Screening
With more PDFs automatically available, teams can move into Full-Text screening sooner without waiting to complete manual PDF collection.
End Result
More PDFs retrieved automatically. Less manual searching. Faster evidence synthesis workflows.
This enhancement is another step towards reducing manual overhead and allowing review teams to spend more time analysing evidence rather than managing files.