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2 years ago in Publishing and Access By Abhay R
Can I legally share a PDF of my published paper with colleagues or on my website?
A colleague asked for a PDF of my paper published in Elsevier journal. Can I just email it to them? Can I put the final PDF on my personal academic website? I'm confused about what's allowed.
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By Meera Answered 1 month ago
Sharing the final publisher PDF is usually a copyright violation unless the publisher's policy explicitly allows it (some, like MDPI, do). However, most publishers permit you to: 1) Email the PDF to individual colleagues for personal scholarly use. 2) Share the "Author's Accepted Manuscript" (postprint) on your personal website or institutional repository, often after an embargo. The key is the version. Check your publisher's specific policy on SHERPA/RoMEO. When in doubt, send a link to the official journal page or a link to the publicly accessible postprint in a repository. This respects copyright while ensuring access. Ignorance isn't a defense, but most publishers are reasonable about informal scholarly sharing—they primarily object to systematic redistribution that undermines subscriptions.
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