Frequently Asked Questions

Of course you can!  Just call us at 800-333-1199 to purchase your print or digital subscription or gift subscription by phone.  International customers can call 001-1-515-248-7684.  Once purchased, you can use your account number to activate your digital access.  Click here for instructions.

Please note, certain sales and discounts offered online are not availble by phone.

If you purchased your subscription here at ScientificAmerican.com, your digital access was instantly activated with your purchase.  For print or digital subscribers who did not purchase their subscription on our website, you need your account number to activate online and tablet content.  If you need help locating your account number, please visit this FAQ, call us at 800-333-1199, or email us.  We would be happy to provide it to you.  

Please note: your account number is numeric only. Click here for a handy image of our mailing label, showing the account number highlighted.

Once you have your account number, please proceed with the following:

If you have not yet registered an account with us online:
Go to the home page and click on Sign In, then click on Not yet registered?.
Check the "I am already a subscriber" box.
Enter your account number and last name, then click on "Look up Account"
Complete the form, select your email preference, and agree to our Terms of Use
Click Create My Account
You will need to verify your account with an email that will be automatically sent to you.  Check your spam folder for this email if you do not receive it right away.  Once your account is verified, your online and tablet access will be active.

If you already have an account at ScientificAmerican.com:
Please sign in, then select My Subscriptions from the My Account menu.  If you do not see your subscription there, click on "Don't see all your subscriptions?", enter your account number in the field that pops up, and click on Add.

Print subscribers can find their account numbers on the address label of their issues. It is numeric only, five to eight digits long, and does not include any letters, symbols, or leading zeroes. Therefore, if your mailing label shows SCA0001234567/0#, your account number is 1234567.  Account number highlighted in sample label below.



If you do not have an issue handy, or if you are a digital-only subscriber, you can always email us or call us at 800-333-1199 for your account number.

If you subscribe to Space & Physics, your subscription does not need an account number for activation. Space & Physics subscriptions are active as soon as the subscription purchase is completed on our website.

Mind Magazine was last published in print in May of 2017.  Mind is now a digital-only magazine.  When you subscribe to Mind, it includes both online (pdf) issues, and mobile issues available in the Mind app.

Space & Physics and Health & Medicine are also digital-only publications and are not available in print.

You can get a subscription to any or all of these on our Subscription Page.

If you ordered your Scientific American or Mind subscription online at ScientificAmerican.com, your subscription is automatically enrolled in our Continuous Service Plan. With continuous service, about 30 days before you get your final issue, you will receive notice that your subscription will be automatically renewed. If you want to renew, you don’t need to do anything. We will charge your renewal to the same card you used when you first subscribed. If you don’t wish to renew, let us know upon receipt of the reminder notice. Also, if we are unable to charge your card, we will send you an invoice for your renewal order.

If you ordered your Scientific American or Mind subscription through the mail or over the phone, your will receive several renewal reminder notices prior to expiration. We encourage you to take advantage of the extra savings we offer when you choose a two- or three-year subscription renewal.

And you can always call us at 800-333-1199 or email us to make any changes to your subscription.

Space & Physics and Health & Medicine are new digital-only magazines that are not configured for Continuous Service at this time. We will contact you approximately one month before your expiry issue to offer you renewal options.

If purchasing a gift subscription online, simply check the "This is a gift." box in the shopping cart prior to checkout.  A popup will appear for the recipient’s information. 

If you prefer to buy your Scientific American or Mind gift subscription by phone, please call us. 

Space & Physics and Health & Medicine can only be purchased online at this time.

Gift subscriptions are activated with either an account number or with a gift code, depending on how the subscription was purchased.  When a gift subscription is purchased, an automated email to the gift recipient is sent out with the information needed to activate online access.  This email can sometimes be found in the recipient's spam folder, but sometimes the gift giver doesn't have the recipient's most current email address.  The following provides the information you need to activate your gift subscription when you did not receive a gift email.

If your gift subscription was purchased at ScientificAmerican.com, your gift subscription is activated by a gift code.  If you do not receive the email with the code, please email us and we will resend the code to you.  When you have the code, and after you have registered and verified an account on our website, you then activate the code by clicking on My Account, then My Subscriptions, and lastly on "Have a gift subscription?"  Clicking this last opens a window for you to paste the gift code into.  Once the code is in the window, click ADD.

If your gift subscription was purchased over the phone or through the mail, your account number can be used to activate your subscription.  If you do not receive the gift email, contact us for your account number.  See these full instructions for account number activation.

Please advise us of your new address about 6 to 8 weeks prior to your move. You may change your address with our online subscription management page, you can email us, or you can also call customer service.

The most secure way to update your payment information for renewal is to call us.  Please do not email payment information to us, as it is not secure.

If you purchase a subscription or a subscription renewal from ScientificAmerican.com, your payment information is automatically updated.

If your Scientific American or Mind subscription is currently active, then you can use this online account manager to update your payment method.

The principle difference between the various plans is the depth of archival content included. If you would enjoy having access to every article ever published in Scientific American, we encourage you to consider our Full Archive subscriptions. Full Archive subscriptions include every digital subscription issue of Scientific American going back to 1845.

All print & digital and digital-only subscription plans include online access and downloadable PDFs for the issues included in your subscription term. Scientific American and Mind subscriptions also include corresponding mobile issues found in our apps. 

Scientific American and Scientific American Mind Apps are available from the App Store or Google Play. Subscribers can log into the app with their ScientificAmerican.com email address and password.

Please make sure that you logged on to ScientificAmerican.com. Also make sure that the issue you’re trying to download is included in your subscription plan. Different subscription plans provide different levels of access to Archive material. Additionally, each of our magazines is sold as it's own subscription, and does not include other magazines - Mind is not included with Scientific American, for example.

Please see our Digital Guide for further assistance.

You can call us to cancel a subscription to Scientific American or Scientific American Mind.  To cancel a subscription to Space & Physics, email us.

We have several partners that republish our content in other languages.  They are published and sold independently of Scientific American, so subscriptions and issues must be purchased through our partners directly.  Please click here to see the list of international editions, with links to their websites.

Please visit our page for librarians, or our own FAQ for more information about the Institutional License. 

The subscriptions sold on ScientificAmerican.com are for individuals only, and are not offered to institutions.