How to Read Taylor & Francis and Routledge Articles for Free, Legally
Legal ways to read a paywalled Taylor & Francis or Routledge paper: repository copies after the embargo, author eprint links, preprints, free titles, libraries.
Taylor & Francis publishes more than two thousand journals, and its Routledge imprint is one of the largest publishers in the social sciences and humanities. Papers on Taylor & Francis Online are usually paywalled, and the single-article price is among the highest of any publisher. Here are the legal ways to read them without paying.
1. Check for a free copy in a repository
Taylor & Francis lets authors of papers in its subscription journals place the accepted manuscript in a university or subject repository after an embargo. The accepted manuscript has the same peer-reviewed text as the published article, without the typesetting.
The standard wait is 12 months from first online publication for the science, technology and medicine journals and 18 months for the social science and humanities journals, which includes most Routledge titles. Some journals and funder agreements allow a shorter period. So a science paper more than a year old, or a humanities paper more than 18 months old, quite often has a free copy in a repository. Paste the tandfonline.com link, the DOI or the title into the finder on our home page and it will check.
2. Ask the author for an eprint link
When a paper is published, Taylor & Francis gives the authors a batch of free eprints, usually 50, which are links that give the recipient free access to the published version of the article. Authors can email these links, post them on social media or share them with anyone who asks. Co-authors receive their own batch, so there are often more links available than people realise.
This is the fastest route for a recent paper. A short email asking whether the author has an eprint link left usually gets a reply within days. Our guide has a template for writing to an author, and the same email can ask for the accepted manuscript if the links have run out.
3. Look for a preprint
Taylor & Francis allows authors to share the submitted version of their paper, the preprint, freely and at any time. In the social sciences that usually means SocArXiv, PsyArXiv or SSRN, in economics it is often a working paper series, and in the sciences arXiv or bioRxiv. A preprint can differ from the published paper, since it predates peer review; our guide to preprints and published papers explains what to watch for.
4. Check whether the paper is open access
Taylor & Francis publishes a number of fully open-access journals, including the Cogent series, and it runs an open publishing platform for Routledge authors. It also publishes open-access papers in its subscription journals when the authors' funder or university has paid, and national agreements with universities have made a large share of recent papers from some countries open access. Open-access papers are labelled on the article page, and the finder sends you straight to the publisher's PDF when a paper is one of them. Our guide to the kinds of open access explains the labels.
5. Use a library
Most university libraries subscribe to large Taylor & Francis packages, and Routledge journals are a staple of social science and humanities collections. Go through your library's website or choose the institutional login on the article page. If you are not at a university, public libraries can often obtain a single article by inter-library loan; see our guide to getting papers through a library.
Books and book chapters
Routledge is also a major book publisher, and a search sometimes lands on a chapter rather than an article. Chapters are paywalled in the same way, but the publisher does make some books and chapters open access, and chapter authors are often able to share their own accepted manuscript. The preview on the publisher's page and the Google Books preview together frequently cover the pages you need.
If nothing turns up
For a paper less than a year old with no preprint, the embargo on the repository copy is probably still running, and in the humanities it runs for 18 months. Our guide to journal embargo periods explains the timing. In the meantime, an author's eprint link is the best bet, and the overview of legal ways to read papers for free covers the rest.
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
What is a Taylor & Francis eprint link?
It is a free-access link to the published article that the publisher gives authors at publication, typically 50 per author. Anyone who opens the link can read the paper in full, and authors can share them with whoever asks.
How long is the Taylor & Francis embargo?
For most science, technology and medicine journals the accepted manuscript can go into a repository 12 months after online publication; for most social science and humanities journals, including Routledge titles, it is 18 months.
Are Routledge journals free to read?
Most are not, but individual papers are often open access, authors can share the accepted manuscript after the embargo, and preprints can be shared at any time. A library is the surest route for a recent paper.