I don’t know how best to explain this, but I’ll try. It is increasingly likely that we are going to come across links that look like this:
http://ezproxy.canterbury.ac.nz/login?url=https://link-springer-com/article/10.1007%2Fs40279-015-0431-7
as unfortunately it is easy for Lecturers to create them.
In the above link, notice the hyphens in link-springer-com. This link will not work. But if you click on the correct link
http://ezproxy.canterbury.ac.nz/login?url=https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs40279-015-0431-7
and then look in the address bar of your browser you find that hyphens have replaced the stops in the link.springer.com part:
https://link-springer-com.ezproxy.canterbury.ac.nz/article/10.1007%2Fs40279-015-0431-7
This is an illusion. The chunk link-springer-com.ezproxy.canterbury.ac.nz is not part of a real link, it is a pointer that Ezproxy creates to link to this resource, but underneath the real link still uses stops, not hyphens. This behaviour seems odd but it is the only way that Ezproxy can handle secure links (i.e. https sites) without creating security warnings in your browser – you know the sort, warnings about security certificates etc.
So for these secure sites, if we take the link we see in our browser address bar and use it as the basis of a link for students, it will not work. Far better, if possible, to take a permanent URL from the web site and then add the Ezproxy prefix. However, if this is not possible, experiment with the link to make sure it works – this may mean replacing hyphens with stops.
Of course, it isn’t quite that simple. There are URLs that actually do include a hyphen e.g. http://www.afs-journal.org/.
In summary, if you have a link to an https site that does not work when the Ezproxy string is added, and includes hyphens, be aware that the hyphens may be the problem. Try replacing with stops, but ideally try to connect to the site without using Ezproxy at all (which should be fine on campus), grab the permanent URL and then add Ezproxy.
