We often get this question from our readers: Why I can’t download this article, although I read “Brought to you by CERN Library” on the webpage?

Indeed, on some publishers’ sites, when you access them from a CERN IP address, you get this message wrongly implying that you can read all their e-journals and e-books. This is unfortunately not true: for most publishers, we subscribe to a selection of their journals and we buy only a fraction of their e-books collections.

To know if we have access to a journal or an e-book, we suggest you to check CDS, where we list only the titles we have access to. Please note that in CDS, you need to look for the journals at the title level. All the articles published in the journals are not indexed individually.

Did you ever click on the PDF link to an interesting article and hit a so-called “paywall” instead, either at CERN or, if outside, through the Library proxy? No problem, we can get it for you. Just fill in this form, and we will make sure you get it as soon as possible.

If you have any question or remark, please contact library.desk@cern.ch, visit our webpage or try our new Mattermost Channel!