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Walkthrough · Getting in from off campus

Get to a licensed article from off campus

You are at home, you have found the paper you need, and the publisher is asking you for a card number. This is the five-step route to the copy Aurora already pays for.

Walkthrough 7 min · 5 steps Checked 14 Jul 2026 Works the same in the mobile app English & Arabic
Full access reference
Sign in
Find it
Use the library link
Check the page
If it asks for money
Step 3 of 5 · about 3 minutes left Your place is kept as you scroll. Sign in and it is remembered on your other devices too.

The five steps

Every step ends with one thing you can check, so you always know whether it worked before you move on.

Sign in to the portal first

Start at the library portal, not at the publisher's website. Select Sign in at the top of any page, then pick the route your institution uses. Aurora offers three: your university username, نفاذ, or a library card number for visiting members.

This has to come first. Everything after it depends on the library knowing who you are. If you go to the publisher first and sign in there, the publisher has no way of knowing you belong to Aurora — and it will quote you a price.

You are done when your name appears at the top of the page in place of the Sign in button.

Find what you need

Search from the box on any page, or open the A–Z list if you already know the journal or database by name. Before you click a result, read the badge on it — it tells you what will happen next.

Full text available
Aurora holds a licence. This is the one you want.
Open access
Free for everyone. It opens on or off campus, signed in or not.
Request a copy
Not licensed here. The library can order it for you, normally in two working days.
You are done when you are on the record page for one item, not on a list of results.

Open it with the library's link

You are here

On the record page, use Open full text. Do not use the DOI, and do not use a link you found in a search engine — both of those go straight to the publisher with nothing attached to say who you are.

The library's link sends you through the off-campus service first. It tells the publisher the request belongs to the university, then passes you on. For a moment you will see the library's own address in front of the publisher's.

https://proxy.aurora.edu.sa/login?url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544226001847
The highlighted part is the library. If it is missing, you did not come through the library's link — go back to the record page and start this step again.

In the mobile app there is no address bar to watch. The app sends every Open full text through the same service, so the result is identical — there is nothing extra to do on a phone.

You are done when the publisher's own site has loaded and the library address has disappeared from the bar.

Check the publisher's page

You should now be on the publisher's own site — ScienceDirect, IEEE Xplore, JSTOR, SpringerLink or another. Three things tell you the library came with you.

  • A line naming your institution

    Usually near the top of the page, sometimes beside the download button. The wording varies by publisher; the institution name does not.

    Access provided by Aurora University Library
  • A live download button, not a price

    The PDF or Download control is active. Nothing on the page shows an amount of money.

  • No demand to register with the publisher

    You may create an account on their site if you want to save searches there, but you never need one in order to read what Aurora licenses.

You are done when the PDF opens. If it did, you can stop reading here.

If it asks you to pay

A price, a Purchase PDF button or Get Access means the request reached the publisher without the library attached to it. It almost never means Aurora does not hold the article.

Check these three, in this order. The first two account for most of what the help desk sees.

  1. Are you still signed in?

    A sign-in lasts 8 hours and ends when you close every portal tab. The top of any portal page answers this at a glance: your name, or a Sign in button.

    Sign in again
  2. Did you arrive from the record page?

    A bookmark saved last term, a link a colleague sent, or a result from a web search all skip the off-campus service. Go back to the portal and search for the title again — it takes ten seconds and fixes this most of the time.

    Search again
  3. Is the article inside the years we subscribe to?

    Some titles are licensed only from a certain year onwards, so a 1994 paper in a journal we take from 2008 will be behind a price. The record page states the covered years under Access.

    See covered years

If all three are right, it is our problem and not yours. Report a problem on the record page sends the library the exact link, the route it took and the time it happened. We either repair the route or order the article for you, normally within one working day.

You are done when you have the article, or when you have reported it and have a reference number.
Did this get you to the article? Answers are anonymous. A No opens one optional box asking which step failed, and that goes straight to the team that maintains the off-campus route.
Still stuck? Ask us
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