ScienceDirect

User Quick Start Guide

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Enabling efficient research for 21 years and counting, Elsevier’s ScienceDirect lets you explore wide-ranging subjects in:

Social Sciences and Humanities Health Sciences

Physical Sciences and

Life Sciences
Engineering

From basic science to current developments to novel research, researchers worldwide are downloading two million PDFs
of relevant content each day from ScienceDirect.

A ScienceDirect subscription gives you access to 16 million full-text articles from 2,500+ journals and more than 39,000
book titles. With more than 900,000 open access articles at your fingertips, the next big step towards discovery is up to
you!

Let’s get you started…

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Create a user account
With a ScienceDirect account, you unlock features specifically designed to support your research goals. Give us a few details,
and your account lets you:

• Set up alerts for searches,

journals and book series

• Receive recommendations
personalized to your
search history

• Access and manage your

reading history

• Access ScienceDirect
remotely outside your
institution’s IP range
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Search
Now that you’re on ScienceDirect, it’s time to look around.

The ScienceDirect search functionality offers a multitude of search fields, filters and alerts to focus your search and improve
your workflow. First, choose the search technique you prefer.

If you want a broad search that you can filter afterwards, head to the search bar for a quick search:

Enter keywords, an author name, or the title of a journal or book to get started.
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Search
You might want to begin with a narrow search
instead, so click on Advanced Search where you’ll
see how easy it is to get specific with the new
open-design form:
• Search by author affiliation or article type
• Filter for open access/open archives articles
• Check out suggested publications
• Filter for volume/issue number in journal/book
searches
• Set search alerts
• Notice access/entitlement icon on each article
• Download search alerts list as a .CSV
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Browse
If you want to begin your ScienceDirect experience by browsing through the content instead of searching, just
click on Journals and Books on the homepage.

This modernized browse page has enhanced search capabilities

and simpler URL composition.

• Refine publications by domain and sub-domain

• Select the type of publications
• Choose the type of access
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Journal homepages easier to evaluate
When your research takes you to the homepage of a journal quickly determines its relevance to your needs. You spend less time
trying to find the right information – they load within one second – and more time using what you find in your workflow.

With the “card concept”, a series of rectangular panels containing specific information types, you can find journal information
and related links more easily than ever. The new design also improves accessibility for users with disabilities.

• Improved navigation allows you to

discover relevant content faster

• Access indicators help identify

available content, including open
access
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Book homepages offer clearer identity
When you access books on ScienceDirect, you’ll see right away that you’re consulting a trusted, high-quality source.
The book homepages include:

• Detailed book information • Intuitive ways to navigate and interact with content • One-second load times

Plus, go ahead and browse books on multiple devices wherever you are.
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ScienceDirect topics expand your knowledge with foundational content
ScienceDirect Topics have become a popular feature for researchers and students looking to broaden their understanding of
scholarly and technical terms. Topics are especially useful for onboarding in interdisciplinary research or just to learn or better
understand a new concept.

Topics reveal succinct, selected contextual information from reference books, valuable content when and where you needed it in
your natural research workflow. You can access Topics via ScienceDirect and also through search engines such as Google.

When working in ScienceDirect, simply hover over a highlighted word in the article you’re reading. Via hyperlink, you can
immediately go to a page with authoritative and foundational content for that term.
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ScienceDirect topics expand your knowledge with foundational content
You’ll see

• A short definition
• Related terms
• Excerpts from relevant book content

You have the option to dig deeper by clicking to read an entire chapter.

If you’re using Google or another search engine to get more information about a term, just enter the term and ScienceDirect, and it
comes up. With enhanced taxonomy across all 20 Topic domains, Topic pages are available for many disciplines including:
• Neuroscience • Computer Science • Food Science
• Biomedical Sciences • Engineering • Materials Science and Materials Engineering
• Life Sciences • Mathematics • Earth and Environmental Sciences
• Chemistry • Physics and Astronomy • Psychology
• Chemical Engineering • Economics, Econometrics and Finance • Social Sciences
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Stay signed in to get personalized recommendations
You can prevent information overload by staying signed in while you browse and search in ScienceDirect. Personalized
recommendations will make your research more effective. The more you interact with ScienceDirect while signed in, the more
precise and relevant the recommendations become.

Let us help you direct the right content to you when and where you need it during your research process. We’ll use machine
learning and your online activity to suggest content tailored specifically to your needs.

On the homepage, click on your name and then 'My recommendations’ to see what our adaptive algorithm has found for you.

My recommendations offers you a complete list of recommended research content each week, delivered to you via email.
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Schedule alerts about new relevant research
Unlike Recommendations, Alerts let you know about only new research that meets your criteria.

Once you’ve either searched in ScienceDirect or browsed publications, you can choose to sign up for alerts. Go to ‘My alerts’,
then click on either ‘Journal & Book series’, ‘Search’ or both. You can select a publication or carry out a search to set the alerts
you want.
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Easier tracking of your reading history
When signed in, Reading History helps you keep track of
what you have been reading

The 100 most recent articles you have viewed will be

saved.

You can then review, save and delete items from your
ScienceDirect Reading History or download the full list
of entries.
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Quickly export your book chapters from ScienceDirect into Mendeley
Many of you also use Mendeley, our free reference manager and an academic social network, seamlessly embedded in ScienceDirect.
Knowing that importing PDFs and references from the web is an important part of many researchers' workflow, you can directly export
articles from ScienceDirect into your Mendeley library

Once you've been authenticated on ScienceDirect, the Mendeley Importer will recognize that you have the right to access full-text
PDFs and download them directly to your Mendeley Library with just one click.
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Share articles with your colleagues with just a click
Social Sharing allows you to easily share articles right from ScienceDirect via your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit, or
email account.

Just click on the appropriate icon and post what you wish to share. This will allow you to receive feedback on findings and
publications more quickly from your collaborators, peers and students, increasing your efficiency during already busy workdays.
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Access ScienceDirect remotely, whenever you want
You can access ScienceDirect anytime and anywhere. On your laptop or tablet, at home or on the road, on campus or off, you
can keep your research going by registering for remote access to ScienceDirect:

• Click ‘Remote access’ in the footer (bottom) of

any ScienceDirect page

• Follow the instructions to enter your institutional

email address (e.g. [Link]@[Link])

• Select your organization from the drop-down

menu and enter a password

• We’ll send you an email where you’ll click on the

‘Activate my remote access now’ link

• You’re ready to use ScienceDirect remotely

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A research experience accessible to all
We've enabled access and optimized the ScienceDirect experience for everyone, including individuals with impairments such as
auditory, cognitive, physical, speech and visual.

Our goal is to meet level A and AA guidelines established by the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines 2.0 and the U.S. Section 508 Standards of the Federal Rehabilitation Act, as well as similar standards enacted by
countries around the globe.

Here are some features that enhance the accessibility of ScienceDirect:

• HTML journal articles and book chapters are compatible with screen readers such as JAWS, NVDA and Apple's VoiceOver
• Pages are well structured using headings, landmarks and lists so users of assistive technology can easily jump around pages
• Math content is available in MathML, which can be spoken by text-to-speech engines or converted to Braille and
pasted into math equation editors or Microsoft Office documents
• Pages employ ARIA (Accessibility for Rich Internet Applications) to enhance navigation, orientation and labeling for users of
screen readers and other assistive technology
• Images have alternative text descriptions to convey the meaning of an image to screen readers
• PDFs with searchable text are available
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Security is important to you and us
We're more proactive than ever in preventing security breaches - and taking quick action if any occurs. Monitoring and
communication are fundamental in keeping your interaction with ScienceDirect as secure as possible:

• We monitor on a 24/7 basis and block the session IP if we detect abnormal behavior

• We get in touch with you and ask you to investigate the particular IP

• If solved, we unblock the IP

ScienceDirect is also available via HTTPS

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Seek help when you need it
Our ScienceDirect Support Center can answer your frequently asked questions and offers video tutorials and other user
guides.

You can access the ScienceDirect Support Center by clicking the Help button in the upper right corner of the ScienceDirect
pages or by following the link above.

Stay up to date with product enhancements here.