I'm currently at an institution that has a phenomenal library system. I think every journal article or book I've ever needed, no matter how old or obscure, was available to me. I consider myself very fortunate, and always try to hold on to resources that I may not have access to in the future. I may be transitioning to a new institution soon, where a colleague of mine tells me the library is significantly smaller, and has far less access to journals, especially to those in science/engineering, which can be pretty pricey.
I'm concerned that in the future my manuscripts will be rejected because my literature searches will be limited to only the journals I have access to.
I was trained to never cite articles that I have not read, understood and could justifiably show are relevant to my work; I agree with that philosophy, so picking citations as "filler" is not something I am comfortable doing. If all that is available is an abstract, I know that can help, but it's no substitute for the article itself.
I know that reviewers and editors are supposed to consider your contribution as a whole, and not just look at whether or not you cited the articles they think you should have, but the world is an imperfect place.
For those at institutions with limited journal subscriptions/small library systems, how do you justify your literature searches that are missing articles that the reviewers and editors feel are necessary? Aside from your research contribution itself, assuming it is sound, worthwhile, and well-written, is it just the case that, those at institutions with fewer resources inherently have to publish in more accepting (less competitive) journals by default?
UPDATE Thanks for everyone's interest and suggestions. The answers so far have focused on how to get those tough-to-find sources, but I'd really like to see some suggestions on how to handle the other side: communicating reference shortfalls to reviewers when the aforementioned suggestions don't pan out. Thoughts?
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