Graduate & Online Students: Embargoes in Academic Publishing

In academic publishing, an embargo refers to the time for which full-text access to academic journals is not allowed to certain users (those without certain subscriptions). The purpose of an embargo is to protect the revenue of the publisher. Embargoes can be set for various timeframes: the most common are six months, one year, and two years.

Just because an article is under an embargo does not mean you cannot obtain a copy of it. There are steps to follow to obtain the article:

1. Check if Savage Library has access to the article via a different database. You can do this by searching for the title of the journal (not the article) in Full Text Finder. This resource will tell you in which database and what years we have access to a given title.
2. Check if Savage Library has access to the article in print. Searching the Library Catalog will provide a list of journal issues in print for titles we hold. If you are off-campus, you may request a copy of the article by emailing Andrea Brown, abrown@western.edu.
3. If Savage Library does not have access to the article electronically or via print, please fill out an Interlibrary Loan request form and we will obtain the article for you from another institution. Read more about Interlibrary Loan and find the request forms on our webpage: https://library.western.edu/lib/ill-articles