How to Read Oxford Academic Articles for Free, Legally
Legal ways to read a paywalled Oxford University Press article: repository copies after the embargo, open-access titles, PubMed Central and libraries.
Oxford University Press publishes several hundred journals across science, medicine, law, the humanities and the social sciences, all hosted at academic.oup.com under the Oxford Academic name. Most of their research articles need a subscription. Here are the legal ways to read one without paying.
1. Check for a free copy in a repository
Oxford allows authors to make the accepted manuscript of their article, the peer-reviewed text before copy-editing and typesetting, available in their university's repository or on their own website after an embargo. The length depends on the journal: it is typically 12 months for science, medicine and technology titles and typically 24 months for arts and humanities titles, with some journals shorter or longer. Oxford publishes a list of the period for each journal.
That means an Oxford article more than a year or two old often has a free copy somewhere. Paste the academic.oup.com link, the DOI or the title into the finder on our home page and it checks the open-access indexes for one. For the difference between the accepted manuscript and the published version, see the kinds of open access.
2. Check whether the article is already open access
A growing share of Oxford's output is open access from the day it appears:
- Some journals are fully open access, so every article in them is free. Nucleic Acids Research, one of the most cited journals in molecular biology, has been fully open access for many years. GigaScience and a number of newer titles are the same.
- Most of the subscription journals are hybrid, meaning individual articles can be open access when the authors or their funder have paid for it. These are marked "Open Access" on the article page, with a Creative Commons licence underneath.
- Oxford has read-and-publish agreements with university consortia in a number of countries, under which articles by authors at those universities are published open access automatically. Recent articles from UK and some European authors are often free for this reason.
If the article page shows a PDF button with no login prompt, it is one of these.
3. Search PubMed Central and Europe PMC
For Oxford's biomedical journals, including the big ones in genetics, epidemiology, infectious disease and cardiology, a copy is frequently deposited in PubMed Central. Research funded by the US National Institutes of Health must be deposited there, and Oxford deposits on authors' behalf for many funders. Europe PMC mirrors the same content. The finder checks both, or you can search PubMed Central directly for the title; our guide to PubMed and PubMed Central explains the difference between the two.
4. Look for a preprint
Preprints are less common in the humanities, but in Oxford's science and medical titles a growing number of papers were first posted on bioRxiv, medRxiv or arXiv. The preprint is the authors' own version from before peer review, so read preprints and published papers for what may differ. The finder lists preprints alongside other copies.
5. Ask the author
Authors may send a copy of their own article to someone who asks, and most are glad to. A short, polite email usually gets a reply within a few days. Our guide has a template for emailing an author, and each paper page on this site includes a ready-written request when no free copy is found.
6. Use a library
University libraries subscribe to many Oxford journals, often as a whole collection. Use the institutional login on the article page or go through your library's website. If you are not at a university, a public library may be able to obtain the article by inter-library loan, and some universities offer alumni access. See getting papers through a library.
7. Check whether you qualify for a free access programme
Oxford is a partner in Research4Life, which gives institutions in lower-income countries free or very cheap access to its journals, and it works with similar programmes such as EIFL. If you are at a university, hospital or government institution in an eligible country, your library may already have access even if it does not advertise it. Ask the librarian.
If nothing turns up
For a recent article with no preprint and no open-access licence, the embargo is probably still running. Journal embargo periods explains the timing and why humanities articles take longer. Asking the author is the fastest route in the meantime, and the finder will pick up the repository copy once it appears.
Find a free copy of a paper
Paste a DOI, a link to the paper or its title, and we will look for a free, legal copy. No signup.
Frequently asked questions
Are Oxford Academic journals free to read?
Some are. A number of Oxford journals are fully open access, and individual articles in the others may be open access if the authors paid for it or were covered by a read-and-publish agreement. The rest need a subscription, though a free accepted manuscript often exists after the embargo.
How long is the Oxford University Press embargo?
It varies by journal. Science, technology and medicine titles typically allow the accepted manuscript to be shared 12 months after publication, and arts and humanities titles typically 24 months. Oxford publishes the exact period for each journal.
Is Nucleic Acids Research free?
Yes. Nucleic Acids Research is a fully open-access journal published by Oxford University Press, so every article can be read and downloaded by anyone.