Signed out you get 1 journal a day. Signed in without a membership you get 10 a day. An active membership removes the limit.
| What you are reading | Signed out | Signed in, no membership |
|---|---|---|
| Projects | none, sign in to open one | 1 a month |
| Journals | 1 a day | 10 a day |
| Publications | 3 a month | 5 a month |
An active membership removes the limit entirely.
Returning to something you have already opened is free. The allowance buys that many DIFFERENT items in the period; once you have opened one it stays open to you, however many times you come back to it.
What UNI will tell you is your own number, on the page itself.
Read your allowance off the journal page
Open any journal. Just above the article there is a small counter with an eye icon, reading something like 2 of 3 free views left today. That figure is worked out for you, in that request, by the same code that decides whether to let you in, so the counter and the gate cannot disagree.
The counter is shown only while you still have reads left. It is absent if you hold an active membership, and absent once the allowance is spent. Its absence is not a fault.
The parts that do not vary
- An active membership removes the limit completely, at every tier from weekly to institutional. Members have no reading cap of any kind.
- Journals are counted by the day. Your count clears at midnight UTC, which is not midnight where you are.
- Publications are counted by the calendar month and carry their own separate allowance.
- Your own journals never count against you, and you can always open your own work.
- A journal you were turned away from is not counted. Being stopped does not spend a read.
- Signed out, the count is kept against your browser, and a single internet address may read five times one person's allowance. See Why a shared network runs out of free reads sooner.
The range in play
These are the figures for everyone. UNI ran experiments on the allowance during 2026 and ended them on 2026-08-21; the platform is back on its standard limits, so the number above the article is the same number every other reader sees.
What you see when it runs out
The journal opens, but the writing is not there. In its place you get one of two things:
- Signed in, no membership: a panel headed Your free access has expired today, with a link through to memberships.
- Signed out: a single line reading Sign in to read this journal article.
The title, cover image and author stay on the page, because what is withheld is the article body rather than the whole page. Signing in, taking a membership, or waiting for the day to roll over all restore it.