LibGuides: Alternative Access to Elsevier Articles: Access Options

Quick guide: Access to Elsevier articles

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Other Means of Access

Request articles via interlibrary loan (ILL).

Journal editors provide a valuable service to publishers. If you are an editor of an Elsevier journal, you may contact them to advocate for access to articles for your research purposes.

Attribution

A very sincere thank you to the University of California Office of Scholarly Communication for their use of Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licensing to this content, allowing our reuse. Thank you to UCLA Library for their chart, similarly CC BY, detailing delivery speed for each alternative method of access.

A thank you, as well, to the Florida State University Libraries for the inspiration to include information recommending contacting the publisher directly for access.

Find an Open Access Copy

Some authors may have already posted their articles open access (OA), either in their journal, in a repository, on a personal webpage, or on an academic networking website. It is worth checking to see if the article you’re seeking is already online and free of charge by searching its title in Google or Google Scholar.

Open Access Search Tools

Libraries' Search
You can limit a library search to open access availability. Libraries' Search also integrates Unpaywall, a database of millions of open access articles.
Unpaywall
You can either directly search Unpaywall’s database of open access articles by entering the DOI for an article, or (more easily) install the Chrome/Firefox browser extension, which will point you to any open access versions of paywalled articles you come across online.
Open Access Button
From the OA Button’s website, you can enter an article’s URL, DOI (a unique identifier), title, or other information to check for free and legal open access versions. Even better, the OA Button also offers Chrome and Firefox extensions. Once installed, these extensions will automatically search for an open access copy. When an open access copy is not found, the OA Button can contact the author directly.

Open Access Repositories

There are a number of repositories into which authors have deposited (self-archived) copies of their articles. Most repositories are well-indexed, so merely searching for the article should surface an open access copy if one exists.

Note: The University Libraries do not endorse the use of SciHub.

Request it from the Author

Most publishers allow responsible sharing of your own publications. One way to get an article is to contact an author and ask for a PDF of a preprint. The author’s name and institution (if available) are usually shown on the preview page of the article. Some authors are open to receiving requests for articles via social networking sites where researchers share their work.

Note: University Libraries do not endorse the use of #icanhazpdf.

How long will it take to get access?

Method	Delivery speed	Access to final published version
ILL	2-4 days NB: More difficult requests may take longer for Interlibrary Loan staff to acquire.	Yes
Open repositories	Immediate, if the article is available	Maybe
Browser extensions	Immediate, if the article is available	Maybe
Contact the author	Depends on author responsiveness	Maybe