Is it possible to post a pdf file of a published article to MO as background for a question? I have searched the help for this. I know we can post specific citations to published articles, but this is very inconvenient if the published article is not publicly accessible online. --- No one in the discussion above answered the posted question directly. The answer to the posted question seems to be No, a poster can not post a file on MO. To clarify, I did not mean an inline posting. I meant a posting with a hyperlink to the file. I can arrange to post the file on my website at my institution, and then put a link on MO, but my website may not be permanent, or I may move, and then the link would come up dry. If we could post to MO, then presumably the file would last as ling as the question on MO --- they would both live or die together. There are several perfectly good reasons that a literary reference can help a question. It is not required for the posting. It is background. It is a perfectly valid MO post.