Zetoc Quick Reference Guide
NOTE: All of the terms used on this page are in the Zetoc Glossary.
This document is available in Word and PDF formats.
From the homepage you can find out all about the Zetoc service. News, support and the Zetoc FAQ are all available along with other information about the service.
You have three main options from here:
- Zetoc Search: for citations of journal articles and conference proceedings.
- Zetoc Alert: to set up, modify and delete email alerts.
- Zetoc RSS: to set up RSS feeds for journals.
Details on logging in to Zetoc are available in the Zetoc FAQ
For extra support, check out our Zetoc authentication Screencast Video for step by step guidance Screencast Video.
Note: members of some institutions may be automatically signed in to Zetoc Alert when on-campus.
Zetoc has three search options:
- General Search - for Conferences and Journals.
- Conference Search.
- Journal Search.
You can enter search terms in any number of the boxes. Use single words, several words, or words enclosed by quotation marks in order to retrieve specific phrases, such as “aurora borealis ”.
We have provided some search examples in our workbooks.
For extra support, check out our Zetoc Search Screencast Video for step by step guidance Screencast Video.
- If you enter more than one word in the same field, the search engine will place an automatic AND between the terms entered. You cannot specify your own Boolean operators.
- Enter terms in double quotes to search for a phrase or specific author e.g. “climate change” , “Wilson S”.
- Truncate search terms e.g. hyppo* will find hyppocampal, hyppocampus, hyppotherapy, hyppocampectomy etc.
- Include a publication date, or date range e.g. 1996 or 1995-1999 to narrow your search.
- Brief display: this is the initial display that results from a search. By default the brief display will 'Show Less Record Information'
. Select the 'Show More Record Information'
option in order to display additional record details, including abstract when made available by the publisher. Navigate through the records by using the Next and Previous buttons, and the First and Last buttons.
- Full display: view the full record by clicking on the record title.
- The Open Access symbol
is displayed against those records from Open Access journals.
- Results are shown in pages of 25. If you only find one record you are given the Full Display. If you find two or more records you are given a Brief Display.
- Change the order in which results are listed from the default reverse date (i.e. most recent first) to sort by date (i.e. oldest first) or alphabetically by title. Note: you cannot change the order if you have a large number of hits.
The full record display provides full details about an article/paper. Each record is divided into fields which are labelled to indicate their content e.g. title, author(s) etc. When made available by the publisher abstracts are included. The Open Access symbol is displayed in the full records of articles from Open Access journals.
From here there are three options; to access the full text, to request a copy from your institution's library, or to buy from British Library Direct.
- You may be able to view the full text of articles in Zetoc if you are from UK higher or further education institutions.
- The more information, link at the bottom of a full record (which may appear to you as a customised full text link) takes you to further pages of links to electronic resources.
- The resources available to you, including full text, will depend upon the institution that you are accessing Zetoc from.
- Try using the link to see what is available to you.
- Alternatively, if the record is from an Open Access journal there will be a link to view the full text on the publisher website.
- Zetoc provides a page to facilitate making an inter-library loan enquiry.
- The page that you see will depend upon the institution that you are from.
- Click on the Request a copy from your Institution's Library link from the full record to view the ILL page, which will include the details of the item that you wish to borrow.
- All articles and papers in Zetoc are available from British Library On Demand.
- Click on the link to Buy from the British Library at the bottom of the full record and complete a short online registration before ordering your documents. Pricing will be displayed before confirming your order request.
- Select records for emailing by tagging them. You do this by clicking in the checkbox beside each record.
- The default is select all (i.e. if you do not tag any records).
- Email records by clicking the Email Records button and entering the email address. You may select long labels e.g. Author(s):, or short labels eg AU:.
- You may also choose a title for your email.
- You cannot email more than 500 records at a time.
- Select records for downloading by tagging them. You do this by clicking in the checkbox beside each record.
- The default is select all (i.e. if you do not tag any records).
- Save records by clicking on the Download button. You may select long label e.g. Author(s):, or short label e.g. AU:. If you wish to import the saved records into biobliographic databases you would need to select the short label option.
- You can then save the records as a text file. You may wish to import your records into a local bibliographic database such as EndNote or Reference Manager.
- View your recent searches by clicking on the History button.
- You can view, email, download, or edit the results of a previous search.
- The search history is stored in the current browser session only and will not be available once the session has ended (i.e. once the web browser has been closed).
Note: members of some institutions may be automatically signed in to Zetoc Alert when on-campus.
- Log into Zetoc Alert.
- Enter your email address in the box provided.
- You can choose to name your list. Note: Members of some organisations will be given an automatically generated name; you will not be able to name these lists.
- Click on the Create button and you will get confirmation that the list has been created as well as the expiry date, which is 12 months from the date of creation.
- The list has now been created, and you need to add journals and searches.
- Add journals to your Alert list by clicking on the Add Journals button. You will see a split screen with the details of what is in your list on the left and the search facility on the right.
- Search for journals alphabetically, by search term or by subject.
- Add journals to your list by clicking the Add button. Open Access journals can be identified by the inclusion of the Open Access symbol against the relevant titles. The Add button will change to In list and you will see that the journal is now shown in the left-hand frame as being in your Alert list.
- Add searches by clicking on the Add Author/Title Searches button. You will see a split screen with the contents of your list on the left and the search facility on the right.
- Enter keywords from the title or authors into the boxes provided and click Add to list. You will see that the search is now shown in the left-hand frame as being in your Alert list. Note: you can only have up to 50 journals or searches in any one list, but you can create many lists as you wish.
- Log into Zetoc alert using your username and password (you must use the one used to create the list as lists are effectively 'owned' by usernames). Note: Members of some organisations will be given an automatically generated name; you will not be able to rename these lists.
- Use the drop down menu to select the name of the alert list you would like to rename and click the Rename option.
- When prompted enter the new name for alert and select OK.
- Confirmation that the alert has been renamed will be displayed, along with a link to take you back to the Alert Homepage.
- Log into Zetoc Alert.
- You can select the Zetoc Alert from the drop-down list or enter the name of the list you wish to renew.
- Click the Renew/Modify button.
- From this page you can change the email address that the list is sent to, renew the list for another 12 months or modify the list.
- To remove journals or searches click in the check box and then click on Remove Journals/Searches.
- To add journals or searches use the appropriate buttons and you will get to the split screen allowing you to see your list contents and add journals or searches.
For extra support, check out our Zetoc Screencast Video for step by step guidance Screencast Video.
- Log into Zetoc Alert.
- You can select the Zetoc Alert from the drop-down list or enter the name of the list you wish to delete.
- If your list name was automatically generated you will be prompted to enter the name of the list.
- Click the Delete button and select Yes to confirm the deletion of the Alert list.
For extra support, check out our Zetoc Screencast Video for step by step guidance Screencast Video.
You can transfer an Alert list to a new username and password via a link in the Alert email.
- At the end of each Alert email you will find a link to allow you to transfer your list to a new login.
- Click on the link in order to log into Zetoc with your new username and password. This will automatically transfer your Alert list.
For extra support, check out our Alert Transfer Video for step by step guidance Screencast Video.
- Click on Zetoc RSS.
- You can search for journals alphabetically, via a search form, or by category.
- Journals that offer an RSS Feed have an RSS button
beside them, this takes you to the entry for that journal.
- You can subscribe to the feed in various ways, depending upon your chosen RSS reader (also called feed readers or aggregators and including browser-based readers).
- Feeds for each journal issue are kept for one month.
- Information is available on the data included in a Zetoc journal RSS feed on the About Zetoc RSS page.
- For extra support, check out our Zetoc RSS Screencast Video for step by step guidance Screencast Video.
We have created a series of screencast videos for Zetoc, found at: Zetoc Screencast videos
They include an introduction to the Zetoc service, tutorials for how to authenticate to the Zetoc service, using the Search, Alerts and RSS Feed features, and more in-depth topics.
- For search help click on the help button
- Zetoc FAQ also provides answers to some of the more common queries.
- Detailed workbooks are available.
Last updated: March 2018. If you have any queries, comments or suggestions about the text or examples included in this workbook, please forward them to help@jisc.ac.uk (please add ‘Zetoc’ to the subject line).
