How to Read ScienceDirect and Elsevier Articles for Free, Legally

ScienceDirect is the website where Elsevier, the largest academic publisher, hosts its journals. They include Cell, The Lancet and more than two thousand others. Most of the articles are behind a paywall, but there are several legal ways to read one without paying.

1. Check whether a free copy exists elsewhere

Elsevier lets its authors share versions of their papers. Authors may post a preprint anywhere at any time, put the accepted manuscript on their personal website straight away, and place it in their university's repository after an embargo set by the journal. The result is that many ScienceDirect articles have a free copy on another site.

Paste the ScienceDirect link, the DOI or the title into the finder on our home page. It recognises ScienceDirect, Cell and Lancet links and checks the open-access indexes for a free copy.

2. Look for the open-access label

A growing number of articles on ScienceDirect are open access, because the authors or their funders paid to make them free. They are marked "Open access" near the title, and you can read and download them without logging in.

3. Check the open archive

For more than a hundred of its journals, Elsevier makes articles free to read after a delay that varies by journal. This is called the open archive, and the articles are marked as such on ScienceDirect. If the paper you want is a few years old, it may already be free on the publisher's own site. Our finder reports these too.

4. Ask the author for a share link

When an article is published, Elsevier sends the author a personal Share Link that gives anyone who clicks it free access for 50 days. Authors often post these on social media or their own site soon after publication. After the 50 days, authors can still send you a copy privately. Our guide has a template for the email.

5. Look for a preprint

Many Elsevier papers appear first on a preprint server such as arXiv, bioRxiv or SSRN. The preprint is the authors' own version from before peer review. See preprint versus published paper for how the two differ.

6. Use a library

Most university libraries subscribe to ScienceDirect. If you are a student or member of staff, go through the library website or choose "Access through your organization" on the article page. If you are not, a public library can often get the article by inter-library loan. Our guide to getting papers through a library explains how.

What does not work

Clearing cookies or using a private window makes no difference on ScienceDirect. The full text of a subscription article is only sent to readers who are logged in through a subscriber, so there is nothing hidden on the page to reveal. The routes above work because they lead to a copy that is free by right.

Why a recent paper may not be free yet

If the finder reports no free copy for a new Elsevier paper, the journal's embargo may still be running. Our guide to journal embargo periods explains how long they last, and it is worth checking again later.