[jonlucc]

Practically, then, how do researchers access Elsevier articles? I work in big pharma, and if there's an article I don't have access to, I just request it through our information services office, and it is emailed to me almost instantly. Presumably, that is charged to my department. Is there a similar system in place at MIT? Does it come out of research budgets now?

[s1mon]

Maybe you left out "legally" from the end of the first sentence, but the obvious answer is Sci Hub.

[projektfu]

For now, if you do not want to join some sort of samizdat group, you can request them from the institution that did the research. Sci-hub allows professors to avoid the hassle of having to manage requests for their articles in this age without secretaries.