The ScienceDirect interface provides access to the electronic content owned by Elsevier and third-party information providers like Cell Press. Max Planck researchers have full text access to nearly the entire journal collection with archival content, including Cell Press and The Lancet journals. In addition, the Max Planck Society covers Open Access fees for Max Planck authors in more than 2500 journals. Further details are available on the MPDL website. The MPG subscription also covers a collection of 680 Elsevier eBooks acquired in 2015. Moreover, selected eBook backfiles have been purchased within the scope of the German national licenses program.

JSTOR provides access to more than 12 million academic journal articles, books, and primary sources in 75 disciplines. Users from the Max Planck Society have access to selected archival collections of scholarly journals and more than 3,000 Open Access ebooks. The book selection is continuously extended by single e-book acquisitions by MPG libraries. For the archival collections, JSTOR's agreements with publishers include an updating provision referred to as a "moving wall". The moving wall is a fixed period of time ranging, in most cases, from two to five years, that defines the gap between the most recently published issue and the date of the most recent issues available in JSTOR.