Depth-First

A Third Failed Test of ACS Articles on Request and How to Help

By Richard L. Apodaca

A previous post detailed my failed attempt to test a rather interesting if not well-known program offered by ACS to corresponding publication authors: "free access" to final published articles after 12 months under the Articles on Request (AoR) program.

In that post I made a mistake that I'll attempt to correct here. Although it doesn't affect my conclusion - that the AoR unlimited "free access" provision doesn't seem to work after 12 months - my mistake does affect those who are trying to repeat my observations.

My mistake was not checking the publication date for the AoR article links I tested. The articles were less than one year old and so are still under the 50-download quota, which is not the part of AoR that's under discussion.

The AoR links that need to be tested instead are for papers more than one year old. From Geoff Hutchison's page, the only candidates are:

Using the first link as an example, on Chrome 26.0.1410.40 beta under OS X Lion I was redirected to the following page when logged in with my ACS ID:

ACS AOR Paywall

Clicking on the "Hi-Res PDF" link reloaded the paywall page. Logging out of my ACS account and trying the link again sent me to a login screen. After logging in I was directed to another paywall page.

Running the same test with Internet Explorer 9 under Windows Vista redirected to a different page, but with a paywall firmly in place nevertheless:

ACS AOR Paywall IE

There are three simple things you could do to help me get to the bottom of this mystery:

  • Click on one of the three J. Phys. Chem. C links above from a computer without access to that journal's content.
  • Let me know if you were able to get to the full article content and whether you had to use an ACS ID to get it.
  • Send me an AoR link to a paper published more than one year ago in a journal other than J. Phys. Chem. C to test.

The ACS Articles on Request "free access" provision didn't work as advertised in my hands for papers published more than 12 months ago. I'm sorry for any confusion resulting from my previous post and hope that the information contained here offers a better basis for discussion.