The Zetoc service provides Z39.50-compliant access to the British Library's Electronic Table of Contents (ETOC). The database gives access to over 28,500 journals and more than 52 million article citations and conference papers. Zetoc covers every imaginable subject in science, technology, medicine, engineering, business, law, finance, the arts and humanities. The database covers the years from 1993 to date and is updated daily. A list of journal titles covered by Zetoc also provides the ISSN, latest issue and date loaded.
Zetoc Search allows you to search over 52 million journal and conference records. 3 search options are available: General Search to search for both journal articles and conference proceedings, Journal Search to search for journal articles, and Conference Search to search for just conference proceedings. Enter information into the search boxes provided and click 'Search' in order to retrieve your search results. Search results are displayed as full records, divided into fields which are labelled to indicate their content e.g. title, author(s) etc. In the "Further Options" section at the bottom of the record there are options to link to the full text (if available to you via your institution), to request a copy from your institution's library or to buy from the British Library Direct. We have provided some search examples in our workbook.
Zetoc Alert is a current awareness service that sends you email alerts matching the search criteria that you have provided whenever new data is loaded into the database. The searches may be for particular journals, for authors and for keywords from the titles of articles and papers. These email Alerts will be sent on the day the new data is loaded into the database (the database is updated each week day so this can be as soon as 72 hours after publication). There is no limit on the number of Alerts lists that people can create, altough there is a limit of 50 journals or searches in each Alert list. A Zetoc Alert Guide is available, providing information on how to set up Alerts.
Zetoc RSS enables you to subscribe to feeds for individual journals. You can subscribe to the feed in various ways, depending on your chosen RSS reader. Find out more on our RSS page
Zetoc is made available through Mimas at The University of Manchester. Mimas is a national data centre supported by the Jisc (Joint Information Systems Committee) providing the UK higher education, further education and research communities with networked access to key data and information resources to support teaching, learning and research across a wide range of disciplines. The Mimas portfolio includes Web of Knowledge Support, JUSP, Jorum, The UK Census and Copac plus a variety of additional strategic research and teaching datasets.
Zetoc is the British Library's table of contents, and the BL provides Mimas with the data for the Zetoc service in an automatic data load every night. Zetoc development was funded by the British Library to March 2001, and Jisc subsequently took over the funding of the service.
The BL also has its own service, known as British Library Direct Plus. This subscription-based service allows users to simultaneously search the British Librarys ETOC database, Pubmed and Google Scholar. This is a commercial service, whereas Zetoc is aimed specifically at the higher and further education communities and is provided without direct charge to all Jisc-sponsored institutions. Zetoc has been developed by and for people working in the education community.
Zetoc is made available to institutions through Mimas at The University of Manchester, on behalf of the British Library. Zetoc is available free of charge to any member of a Jisc-sponsored UK further or higher education institution and is also available free of charge to the UK Research Councils. A list of eligible UK Further and Higher Education Institutions and Research Councils is provided on the Jisc Web site.
NHS Scotland and Northern Ireland subscribe to Zetoc.
Zetoc is also available to the Irish higher education institutions and CHEST Associated institutions upon payment of an annual fee. (A list of these subscribing sites is available. If you belong to an eligible institution which does not subscribe please contact your library.) In order to obtain further subscription information, please contact the Zetoc helpdesk, Email: zetoc@mimas.ac.uk.
Please see the Terms and Conditions of Use for further details.
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We are committed to compliance with accessibility standards and with UK legislation, notably the the Disability Discrimination Act (1995) as amended by the Special Education Needs and Disability Act (2001). We have taken the following steps to ensure that we make Zetoc as accessible as we can:
An accessibility audit of the Zetoc information pages has been produced. The full report can be viewed as:
Accessibility Report (PDF)
Accessibility Report (RTF)
Accessibility Report (HTML)
Please let us know if you have any problems accessing Zetoc and we will endeavour to do everything we can to resolve the issue.
For more information about the initial establishment of Zetoc see the Press Release from the British Library.
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A selection of recent articles that refer to the Zetoc service can be found below. Links will take you to external websites and authentication may be required for access.
A questionnaire was included in the Zetoc web site on 01 November 2012 and taken down on 21 December 2012. We would like to thank all those who took the time to complete the survey, we value your feedback. The information received from the survey is being used as part of a detailed review of this Jisc service. A summary of the survey is available at: zetoc.mimas.ac.uk/survey2012.html
2011-12: Go to the 2011-2012 Zetoc survey summary
2010-11: Go to the Zetoc survey 2010-11 summary
2009-10: Go to the Zetoc survey 2009-10 summary
In the summer of 2002, we asked users to fill in an evaluation questionnaire. This was intended to provide an opportunity to gauge general opinion regarding the service and establish a list of potential enhancements. The findings from the questionnaire formed the basis of of the 2002 evaluation report.
Go to the 2002 evaluation report
(html version)
Go to the 2002 evaluation report
(PDF version)
Following on from the evaluation, we asked users to fill in a short follow-up questionnaire. This was intended primarily to indicate whether users feel that the enhancements made to Zetoc have been successful. A second evaluation report was produced, which summarises the results of the initial evaluation, and uses the information gathered from the second questionnaire as well as an interview programme.
Go to the 2003 evaluation report (Word version)
Go to the 2003 evaluation report (PDF version)
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Many institutions may have their own link resolver, enabling their users to link to the full text of articles where they have subscription rights, and also to other electronic resources.
Zetoc supports OpenURL resolver software, enabling users to link from the Zetoc full record to the range of services defined by their institution. Institutions set up their own Resolver page, and it will usually include links to the full text where the institution subscribes to the journal. This means users can go straight from the Zetoc record to the full text, via the Resolver service, if they have access rights.
We offer customisation of the link text provided on the full record page and the option to add an image. The default link text is:
More information about this article
Institutions can provide link text and/or additional text to replace the above, for example:
Find full text
To set this option up, you will need to contact the Zetoc helpdesk with the base URL of your OpenURL resolver and optionally the text that you would like and the image that you would like to use.
Institutions can use any OpenURL resolvers. The resolvers that we currently have enabled include:
Some institutions do not have their own link resolver. For these users, Zetoc gives users the option to look for further information about a journal article or conference proceeding. A link at the bottom of the full record display page will take the user to a default 'More Information' page. This page links to Copac, a union catalogue enabling users to locate the journal in major UK research libraries, the British Library and the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales, Scirus, the science-based search engine, and Google Scholar in order to facilitate users locating journals and accessing the full text.
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Zetoc provides OpenURL ContextObject in SPAN (COinS) support. The OpenURL ContextObject is included within the Zetoc full record page. If you look at the HTML source you will see a SPAN element, which can be accessed by e.g. Firefox plugins, such as bookmarklets, and will allow a user to choose which OpenURL resolver to use. For more information about COinS see: ocoins.info
Zetoc can be accessed as an OpenURL target. For more information, please see our page on OpenURL Target Access.
You may like to read more about OpenURLs on the Library of Congress website guide to OpenURLs.
Zetoc has a SRU interface, and on our site we provide a service definition, instructions for searching, information about authentication and some technical details.
The Zetoc service is provided by Mimas at The University of Manchester on behalf of the British Library and Jisc. For help please see the FAQs or contact the Helpdesk.
Email: zetoc@mimas.ac.uk
Telephone: 0161 275 6109
Please read the Terms and Conditions and Privacy and Cookies information.