Pre-print is download instead of actual article

Iìm trying to save [this article](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S004016251731003X) to my Zotero.

I have Firefox 97.0 (64-bit) on my Fedora Workstation 35, Zotero 5.0.96.3 and the Firefox connector for Zotero.

When I go to the article website and I click on the connector, the PDF that is imported is some sort of pre-print, and not the actual article that I can download by click on "View PDF" on the website.

Why?
  • Uhm ... it doens't happen if, from Science Direct website, I login with my institution credentials.

    In this case the published version is downloaded.

    Where the connector took the pre-print from?
  • I really think this option should be off by default.

    Everytime you have to check either that you can download the real article, or afterwards that the article Zotero has downloaded is the real one and not a pre-print.

    How do I turn this option off?
  • It downloads open-access versions, not just preprints. This feature has been around for years with essentially no complaints. People generally want a copy they can access. If you have access to the file from the site you're saving from, you won't get an OA version.

    Note that the save popup tells you when you're getting an open-access PDF, and the attachment item title tells you whether you have a Submitted Version or an Accepted Version.
  • Thanks dstillman.

    I don't think I need this feature.

    Is there a way to deactivate it?

    Best
  • @dstillman, for me it sometimes downloads the OA version even when I have institutional access (directly on site or via VPN). I guess that's also raffaem's issue.
  • I have the same issue, i.e. OA is downloaded even with institutional access. This is very cumbersome. I hope Zotero could remove this default!
  • @trangcao22: To be clear, if you're not getting a PDF when you have institutional access, you should report that with the URL in question in a separate thread. Turning off OA downloads wouldn't result in your getting a gated version you're not getting now.

    Beyond that, I think there's some misunderstanding around this feature, so I want to be clear here that the "OA" version doesn't imply some lesser version — it often means literally the canonical version from the publisher page. If you paste a DOI into Add Item by Identifier, or you save from somewhere other than the publisher page, or even if there's a problem with Zotero's support for finding a PDF on a site (say because the site recently changed), this feature is what enables Zotero to still download the canonical PDF and add it to the item. If this feature was turned off, you would just not have the PDF more of the time.

    But in some cases we are able to tell whether something is, to use Unpaywall's terms, the Published Version, Accepted Version, or Submitted Version. We can consider providing options to skip Submitted and/or Accepted versions.
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