Sharing and promoting your article

Sharing and promoting your article form an important part of research, in terms of fostering the exchange of scientific information in your field and allowing your paper to contribute to wider scientific progress.

In addition, bringing your research and accomplishments to the attention of a broader audience also makes you more visible in your field. This helps you to get more citations, enabling you to cultivate a stronger reputation, promote your research and move forward in your career. This page describes how you can share your article responsibly and offers advice to help you promote it widely.

As an author, you benefit from sharing the appropriate version of your article which ensures that:

  • You always receive credit – you need to be cited accurately, which will ensure that services such as Mendeley will record the impact of your paper correctly. (Don't have a Mendeley account yet? Please register here.)
  • The integrity of the scientific record is not compromised - you should always direct readers to the most up-to-date version of your article - a link to the published journal article.

Below you will find a  number of options for posting and sharing your article. For further information, please see green open access with Elsevier , our sharing policy and our FAQ on posting.

Unless otherwise noted, the examples below relate to your published journal article. For information on how you can share preprints and accepted manuscripts, please refer to our sharing policy.

Responsible sharing in line with copyright enables publishers to sustain high quality journals and the services they provide to the research community. Elsevier supports responsible sharing and responsible sharing platforms and we adhere to the voluntary sharing principles of the STM Association.

The STM Association has created www.howcanishareit.com which helps to explain how authors and users can share articles published in academic journals. It includes theCan I Share It look-up tool which provides academic researchers with an easy way to check where a journal article can be shared in line with the paper's access and usage rights.

Sharing options for different contexts

I want to share my article:

You can always present your research in forms such as a presentation, or poster.

You can use your article for your own classroom teaching and internal training at your institution (including use in course packs and courseware programs.

You can include your article for grant funding purposes.

You can easily share your article with your colleagues (and other individuals) in private communications such as email.

You can always post your preprint on a preprint server. Additionally, for ArXiv and RePEC you can also immediately update this version with your accepted manuscript. Please note that Cell Press, The Lancet, and some society-owned titles have different preprint policies. Information on these is available on the journal homepage.

We recommend that you list all your publications and link back to the final version on ScienceDirect to make it easier for you to be cited. In addition to this you can also post your preprint or accepted manuscript and any gold open access articles on your non-commercial personal website or blog. Gold open access articles can be posted on your non-commercial personal website or blog. Authors can also share gold OA articles under CC-BY license on commercial websites. See "A word about Gold OA" below.

You can post your accepted author manuscript immediately to an institutional repository and make this publicly available after an embargo period has expired. Remember that for gold open access articles, you can post your published journal article and immediately make it publicly available.

You can always post your preprint version and you can also post your accepted author manuscript after the embargo period has expired. Remember for gold open access articles, you can post the published journal article immediately.

Services such as SCNs enable authors to showcase their work, providing fast and effective ways to collaborate and disseminate research.

A number of SCNs are working together with publishers to help to showcase your work by sharing links to published journal articles on author profiles.

We encourage authors to share their research responsibly on SCNs. You can share your preprint or a link to your article.

Example SCNs can be found on the STM Association's www.howcanIshareit.com page.

Elsevier will send you a 'share link': a personal, customized short link that you will receive after final publication of your article. It provides 50 days free access to your newly-published article on ScienceDirect to anyone clicking on the link. We encourage you to share this link on social media. After 50 days the share link will still work but automatically revert to a link to your full text article.

Open access publishing

You can also share your final published article immediately by publishing it open access.

Gold OA picto

In the gold OA model, you pay an article publishing charge (APC), making your article immediately, permanently, and freely available for anyone to access, read and build on. In many cases, your institution or research funder will pay the APC on your behalf.

Green OA picto

All our journals offer a green open access option, meaning you can post a version of your article in a repository after an embargo, so people can access it freely. See our sharing policy for more information.

Gold open access licensing and sharing

If you have chosen to publish your article open access, you can share according to the end user license selected:

  • CC-BY licensed articles may be shared with anyone, on any platform or via any communication channel.
  • CC-BY-NC-ND licensed articles may be shared on non-commercial platforms only.

More information is available on our open access licenses page.

Do you want to make your published paper OA?

If your article has already been published as a subscription article, it may still be possible to make it open access up until 31st January of the following year by paying the Article Publishing Charge (APC) associated with your journal.  For example, if the article has a formal date of publication of March 2017, authors are able to make their article open access up until the 31st January 2018. This cutoff date is necessary to uphold our no double dipping policy . To request retrospective open access or for further details, please contact us .

Now that your article is published, you can promote it to make a bigger impact with your research. Here's how you can make use of the services we offer.

Share Link

To help you reach more readers, Elsevier will send you and any co-authors a Share Link when your article is published: A personal, customized short link that provides free access to your article for 50 days. This means you can invite colleagues and peers to access your article on ScienceDirect, sharing it by email and social media. Readers who click on the Share Link will be taken directly to your article, with no sign up or registration required.

  • 50 days' free access to the html and PDF versions of your article
  • Sharing the link via social media accounts and email helps you generate interest in your article
  • Sharing your article makes it more visible, potentially increasing downloads and citations
  • The process is simple: just click on the link during the 50-day free access period

You will automatically receive the Share Link at the final citable publication stage of your article. If co-author information is provided at the time of submission, they will also automatically receive a notification with the article's Share Link.

Click here for more information >>

Showcase yourself and your research

As a published author, it's important that you stand out and can be easily found by others.

Mendeley Showcase helps you tell the academic community about yourself as a researcher and the impact of your research. Your Mendeley Profile allows you to:

  • Collate and curate a list of all your outputs in one place.
  • Track and demonstrate the impact of your research through insights including citations, readers, views, media mentions and h-index. Find out more about measuring an article's impact here.
  • Go beyond the metrics and paint your complete research picture by telling others more about yourself and your research interests.
  • Connect with others and find global collaborators.

Complete your Mendeley Profile and showcase yourself .

Don't have a Mendeley Profile? Get one now by creating a Mendeley account.

Other ways to help you make your article stand out can be found in our free quick guide - including tips & tricks on how to promote your article effectively via social media. If you're interested in a free e-learning course on the topic, visit the"Ensuring Visibility" page on Researcher Academy.

Last but not least, don't forget to monitor your article's impact with article level metrics.