Why can I see a "Get PDF" button and a "Request this Item" button on the same item?

This situation usually occurs with hybrid journals where some articles are free and others are subscription-only. EBSCO's discovery system reads items at the journal level , and the journal is tagged as either subscription-based OR open access, it cannot be both. To prevent users trying to access dead links, by default hybrid journals are listed as subscription-based, hence why open access articles in hybrid journals that you do not subscribe to will have a "Request this Item" link even though it is freely available online. This can also occur with records from NHS repositories such as Amber and WMER.

The "Get PDF" button is powered by Libkey rather than EBSCO, and they have a comprehensive knowledgebase of open access articles, regardless of which journal they are indexed in.

This then is why the two links occur. We have discussed with EBSCO the possibility of suppressing the "Request this Item" button if the "Get PDF" button is available, but have ultimately agreed that we need to leave the two links in place. Firstly, Third Iron / LibKey may not always be 100% reliable in providing access, so the "Request this Item" function offers an alternative route for end-users to request the item if there are any issues. Additionally having both links displaying is a robust technical option; suppressing one link depending on the other being present is more prone to error.

While at first glance this appears to be confusing for end-users, in reality we have found that they will click on the link that offers them the full text, and only use the "Request this item" button if that fails.