The Zetoc service provides Z39.50-compliant access to the British Library's Electronic Table of Contents (ETOC). Open Access content from selected publishers is also included and readily identified in Zetoc by the inclusion of the OA symbol 
. The database gives access to over 39,500 journals and more than 65.5 million article citations and conference papers and over 875,000 OA article citations and conference papers from PubMed. 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 58 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 brief records, divided into fields which are labelled to indicate their content e.g. title, author(s) etc. Click on a record's article title to view the full record. In the "Full text options" section of any Zetoc full 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 On Demand. Additionally, Open Access records will have links to view the full text on the publisher website or Europe PMC. We have provided some search examples in our workbook.
You can also find out more about Zetoc Search with our helpful step by step Screencast videos.
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 alerts may be for particular journals, for authors or 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, although 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.
You can also find out more about Zetoc alerts with our helpful step by step Screencast videos.
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.
You can also find out more about Zetoc alerts with our helpful step by step Screencast videos.
Zetoc is made available through Jisc. Jisc provide digital solutions for UK education and researchers. The Jisc Digital Resources portfolio includes Web of Science Support for UK Education, JUSP, The UK Census and Jisc Library Hub Discover plus a variety of additional strategic research and teaching datasets.
Zetoc is the British Library's table of contents, and the BL provides Jisc 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.
Zetoc is made available to institutions through Jisc 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: help@jisc.ac.uk
Please see the Jisc Model Licence - Terms and Conditions of Use for further details.
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 grey literature search will be conducted using ZETOC Conference Proceedings and Open Grey."
"We identified any grey literature studies published in the last five years by searching: Zetoc database; ISI Proceedings; International Bureau for Epilepsy (IBE) congress proceedings database; International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) congress proceedings database; abstract books of symposia and congresses, meeting abstracts, and research reports."
" We handsearched reference lists of included papers and checked the contents pages of 50 relevant journals through Zetoc alerts received during the searching phase."
"We identified any grey literature studies published in the last five years by searching: Zetoc database; ISI Proceedings; International Bureau for Epilepsy (IBE) congress proceedings database; International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) congress proceedings database; abstract books of symposia and congresses, meeting abstracts, and research reports."
"The term grey literature may be used to refer to any source of information which is not indexed in publication databases, for example conference abstracts or government reports. You could consider trying to identify relevant conference abstracts either by screening conference proceedings by hand or using a database such as the Zetoc database"
"Zetoc alerts were set up for over 50 relevant journals, and these have continued to date. Papers generated by the secondary searches (PsycInfo and AMED) as well as the papers from the back-chaining and Zetoc alert processes were used as confirmatory data against the emerging themes from the main review."
"To further illustrate the potential benefit of gray literature searching for this sample systematic review question, a search for conference paper related materials was conducted on Zetoc, with search terms “TBI, GH.” This revealed 15 records at the time of the writing of this article. Included in these is “Rehabilitation and hypopituitarism after traumatic brain injury,” by Masel[49]. This was presented at the “International Symposium on Growth Hormone and GrowthFactors in Endocrinology and Metabolism,” in Prague, Czech Repub-lic, in April 2003. This presentation and its conference proceedings review literature and examine the epidemiology, symptomology, evaluation, and rehabilitation of GH deficiency and hypothyroidism after TBI. Another conference paper found, “Growth Hormone Deficiency after Traumatic Brain Injury in Adults: When to Test and How to Treat?” by Kelestimur, was presented and can be found in the proceedings of the first “Merck Serono growth hormone symposium;New challenges in growth hormone therapy” in Frankfurt, Germany, in 2008 [50]. Such papers could provide valuable information, from noncommercially published data to identify ongoing research, trends within the review topic, or data not yet commercially published that may further inform a systematic review examining GH deficiency in TBI."
"National bodies commissioning reviews typically seek strong representation of indigenous studies within the evidence base for a particular review question. Stansfield et al. [92] demonstrated that a UK-fortified set of seven additional databases (British Education Index, Child data, IBSS, Index of British Theses, Social Care Online, The British Library Integrated Catalogue and Zetoc) yielded additional unique studies. Importantly, they did not only limit themselves to examining retrieval rates but also attempted to assess the impact on findings from the final review. Of five studies identified through UK-fortified strategies, one study was central to development of a descriptive theme while the other four less influential studies added detail and strength to the review’s findings. Furthermore, these studies were of generally high quality, contrasting with the methodological “futility” encountered in a corresponding investigation of effectiveness studies [126]. This represents an important future direction for evaluation of search sources, strategies and procedures."
"Considering the contribution of databases collectively, the following eight databases yielded 89% (135/152) of studies: British Nursing Index (BNI), CINAHL, EMBASE, HMIC, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, SPP, and SSCI. The remaining studies were found from sources outside the databases listed, plus one study for each topic was found from focused searches of ERIC and ZETOC. Sources outside bibliographic databases were important for identifying a small number of studies not located elsewhere, yielding 14% of citations for child to adult services and 6% of studies for mental health setting transitions. This contrasts with the homecare topic where 23% were found from sources outside bibliographic databases."
"...combined with searches of CINAHL and ERIC and Web of science and ZETOC databases using truncations of communication, chronic illness and disease and words relating to family with specific genetic conditions"
"We searched conference proceedings and abstracts using the following resources: ZETOC..."
For more information about the initial establishment of Zetoc see the Press Release from the British Library.
Each year a survey is conducted by including a questionnaire on the Zetoc website, usually from November - December/January. The information received from the survey is used as part of a detailed review of this Jisc service.
2019: Go to the 2019 Zetoc survey summary
2014-15: Go to the 2014-2015 Zetoc survey summary
2013-14: Go to the 2013-2014 Zetoc survey summary
2012-13: Go to the 2012-2013 Zetoc survey summary
2011-12: Go to the 2011-2012 Zetoc survey summary
2010-11: Go to the 2010-2011 Zetoc survey summary
2009-10: Go to the 2009-2010 Zetoc survey 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 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)
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:
![[openurl button]](/ourlimg/FindIt 2.gif)
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 Jisc Library Hub Discover, 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, and Google Scholar in order to facilitate users locating journals and accessing the full text.
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: http://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 funded by Jisc and the data provided by the British Library. For help please see the FAQs or contact the Helpdesk.
Email: help@jisc.ac.uk
Please read the Terms and Conditions , Accessibility Statement and Privacy and Cookies information.
