Signed in without a membership you get 5 publications a calendar month. Signed out you get 3 a month. An active membership removes the limit.
Returning to a publication you have already opened is free. The allowance buys that many DIFFERENT publications in the month; one you have opened stays open to you.
The counter above the document shows where you are: it says how many free views you have left this month.
Three ways the limit never applies to you
- You have an active UNI membership. Every plan carries unlimited publications, with no counting at all.
- You wrote it. Your own publications always open, and they are never counted against your allowance.
- You are UNI staff.
Everyone else is metered. The count runs by calendar month and resets at midnight UTC on the first of the next month. It counts distinct publications, so re-opening one you already read this month costs nothing more.
The number is different for different people
These are the figures for everyone. UNI ran an experiment on the allowance during 2026 and ended it on 2026-08-21, so the number on your counter is the same number every other reader sees.
So the counter above the document is the only accurate answer for you. It reads "N of M free views left this month" and links to membership plans. It disappears once the allowance is spent, and it never shows for members or staff, which means a missing counter usually signals unlimited access rather than none.
Journals are metered per day and projects per month, on separate allowances. Spending publication views does not touch either of them.
The reader needs an account, whatever the counter says
Signed out, you are shown "Sign in to view this publication" in place of the document, even with free views still on the counter. That is a sign-in requirement rather than a payment one, and a free UNI account clears it.
Two things follow from that:
- You read nothing while signed out. Opening the page still spends one of your free views for the month, on a document you were not shown.
- Sign in first, then open the publication. The reader is decided when the page loads, not afterwards.
What running out looks like
The document is replaced by a blurred cover and the message "Your free access has expired this month", with a link to membership plans. Everything else stays on the page: the title, description, author, disciplines, and the like and bookmark buttons. Nothing has been removed from your account, and the allowance returns on the first of the next month.
A document that will not open is a different problem
If you are inside the reader and see "Preparing document pages", or a note that the preview is not available, you have not hit the limit. See When a publication says 'Preparing document pages' or 'Preview unavailable'.