Q. I have a link to an article and it's not working. What is going on?

The are numerous reason why this might be the case.

Very frequently however, it's because the link was obtained from the address bar of the internet browser while someone was looking at the article. In library databases, using this link, even on the same computer not long after initially found, won't work because it's tied to the current session.

Therefore in most databases there will be a permalink feature. Permalinks, sometimes called shareable links or stable links, are permanent and will work later for the original searcher and others it's shared with.

The icon for obtaining the permalink varies across databases - see attached file for some screen shots.

Unfortunately the solution for a 'fixing' the link is to find the article again using any citation information you have for it, including the title, author, year, journal, doi or other details.