Policies vary widely. If you need help in finding the name of a journal, try PubMed's Journal Browser . The National Library of Medicine's Loansome Doc allows you to order documents after first establishing an agreement with a nearby medical library. Detailed information about Loansome Doc is available on the National Library of Medicine's Web Site, in the Fact Sheets section. Loansome Doc is built into Pub Med and Internet Grateful Med.
Charges vary, also depending on the local library.
In addition, there are commercial services for obtaining copies of articles. The Web is an excellent means for conveying health information, but standards for insuring quality are still evolving. There are many general search engines for navigating the entirety of the Web, but Google seems particularly useful. Their site contains useful resources and links to other sites concerned with evaluating the quality of health information on the Web. According to a recent paper in BMJ , many authors agree on key criteria for evaluating health Web sites.