Great question!
Like many of our subscriptions, the vendor makes a "publicly accessible" version of the database (and articles in it) available to search engines like Google to index. You may also find links to the public version (located at https://sciencedirect.com) on Web sites or URL redirects to articles in the database through transportation research tools like TRID. I most cases it looks (and works) identical to VDOT's subscription, but you may notice the absence of VDOT's logo.
No logo means "no go" as far as full-text from VDOT subscription databases is concerned!
We put the VDOT logo on the main page of every subscription database VDOT employees have access to as a visual cue so you can see when you're in the right place to access full-text that is available for "free" by virtue of VDOT's subscriptions.
To help you out, we create special URLs to databases like ScienceDirect and place those URLs on all Library web pages, guides, FAQs and in all our promotional messages and newsletter posts.
In most cases those route VDOT employees to the right place, but if you ever find yourself in the "public" version of ScienceDirect you can do one of the following:
1. Use any link to VDOT's subscription for ScienceDirct from the Library Home Page.
2. Use our custom URL at https://library.virginiadot.org/resources/sciencedirect
