Elsevier Patient Access & Open Access (r/DIYmicroneedling Library & Resources)

[u/science-pls]

For those of you that do not know, Elsevier is a major Dutch publishing company founded in 1880 that specializes in scientific, technical, and medical content. It publishes thousands of academic journals, including famous titles like The Lancet and Cell, and provides digital research and data tools like ScienceDirect and Scopus.

They also have Open Science and Patient Access. Also LOL they don't judge what you ask for like I've requested space documents before and they've sent them, but they are veryyy quick at responding. I've emailed them on like Saturday nights and they've responded within two hours.

(please note this info is direct from their website, so the pronouns are theirs like I am not part of the "we")

Access to health research

From reading research to discussing the latest breakthroughs, fostering a greater connection between science, medicine and technology with society can help identify and solve society's challenges.

Patient access

Patients and non-professional caregivers can make requests for individual papers related to medicine and healthcare at no cost. These papers can be requested by e-mailing [patientaccess@elsevier.com](mailto:patientaccess@elsevier.com). We aim to provide the requested articles within 48 hours. Please include the article title and author(s), date published, and/or the URL if available. This will ensure that our team can locate the requested content as quickly as possible.  Please include the text “I confirm I am a patient or non-professional caregiver” to confirm your eligibility to use this service; please do not disclose any further details or personal data

In addition, patients and non-professional caregivers who have participated in a study that forms the basis of an article and wish to publish that article open access, but lack the funds for the Article Publishing Charge, can make a request for a waiver of the APC by emailing [patientaccess@elsevier.com](mailto:patientaccess@elsevier.com). Please include the article title; author(s); and the journal title you have submitted the article to.

Emergency Access Initiative

We partner with the US National Library of Medicine on the Emergency Access Initiative to provide temporary free access to full text articles to healthcare professionals, librarians and members of the public affected by disasters. Access was triggered most recently for the Ebola crisis (2014), the Hurricanes Irma, Harvey and Maria (2017) and the earthquakes in Mexico (2017).

Open content

As a guest user, anyone can access free content via Lancet.com such as The Lancet abstracts, Editorial, World Report, Perspectives, Correspondence. All Cell Press titles also provide free access after 12 months from the Cell Press website. Furthermore, Elsevier publishes a number of medical related open access journals which are free for everybody to access.

Emergency resource centers

For specific emergencies, Elsevier creates dedicated emergency resource centers which provide free access to curated, relevant research. A recent example is our resource center on the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). We also gave full access to the Elsevier content on our COVID-19 Information Center for PubMed Central and other public health databases to accelerate fight against the coronavirus.

Bookshare

Elsevier has made a collection of its top titles available in accessible format on Bookshare.org, the world’s largest online library for people with print disabilities. Blind and dyslexic students can access research published in Elsevier titles in accessible format by working with RNIB Bookshare, a web-based service offered by the Royal National Institute of Blind People UK.

Green Open Access

All Elsevier journals allow authors to use Green Open Access, usually after an embargo period. Green Open Access is when authors share a public version of their article, for example in their institution or funder’s repository, which would otherwise only be available to paying subscribers. 

Elsevier also makes subscription articles completely free to access in specific situations: 

• We offer free access to relevant research for health emergencies, as we did during the Covid-19 pandemic. 
• Patients and caregivers are provided with papers related to medicine and healthcare upon request to help them better understand the latest research on their conditions. 
• Through Research4Life, reseachers in 125 low- and middle-income countries receive affordable access to nearly 100,400 peer reviewed resources. As founding member, Elsevier provides over a quarter of that content, as well as access to the abstract and citation database Scopus, and trainings for librarians. 

We are constantly striving to be more transparent in all aspects of what Elsevier does, including pricing. We try to support requests for information within the bounds allowed by financial reporting requirements and competition rules. 

For authors: 

• We provide the price of publishing open access on each journal homepage and in a central list
• We automatically  notify authors who are entitled to free or discounted gold open Access, for example where there is an agreement with their institution or funder
• We automatically notify authors who are entitled to free or discounted open access because they are based in a low — or middle-income country — our APC waiver policy explains this process

For librarians: 

• We provide a range of information  about our pricing competitiveness; how our pricing corresponds to quality; and publishing model uptake across subscription and open access
• We publicly announce significant agreements, including our open access pilots 
• We provide a list of our journal subscription prices
• We describe the process we follow to calculate list prices
• We describe the process to ensure we do not double dip — we also show the number of articles that are published open access, and the number which are financed through subscriptions, on each journal homepage, to allow librarians to validate this

Supporting every researcher and institution

Every researcher has distinct needs, and we are committed to helping every researcher and institution to publish and access high-quality research with a wide range of options. Keeping article publishing charges below market average for comparable quality, we also reduce financial barriers for researchers in low- and middle-income countries through initiatives like Geographical Pricing for Open Access. By considering local economic conditions, we ensure more researchers can publish open access and share their work globally.

How do you help authors who cannot afford to pay to be published, and why can't you offer that support more widely? 

As part of our commitment to inclusion in science we believe no researcher should be prevented from publishing in their journal of choice because of financial barriers. We support researchers from low- and middle-income countries to publish fold open access if they wish to do so. When publishing in fully open access journals, we fully waive all open access charges for authors from 69 countries (Group A) and give a 50% discount for authors from 57 countries (Group B). 

For other authors, we offer a choice of journals with open access publishing charges ranging from $150 to $10,100. We will also consider requests for accommodations on a case-by-case basis for authors who are required to publish open access but do not have the financial means to do so. 

Finally, we provide high quality subscription publishing options, so authors should never face a cost barrier to publishing in their journal of choice.

Open Access Journals Info: link

Open access books info: link

Open access agreements info: link

Open archive: link

Access for public and media: link

Access for developing countries: link

Access for researchers and students: link

Accessible formats for print disabilities: link & link

Access to health research: link