NOTE: All of the terms used on this page are in the Zetoc Glossary.
This document is also available in Word and PDF formats.
Zetoc provides Z39.50-compliant access to the British Library's Electronic Table of Contents (ETOC). The database contains details of over 20,000 current journals and 16,000 conference proceedings published per year. With around 20 million article and conference records, the database covers all aspects of health and medicine, including clinical research, diseases, nursing, medical education, physiology, pharmacology and health promotion. The database covers the years from 1993 to date and is updated daily.
Zetoc records can now also include abstracts. Inclusion of the abstract data is with agreement between the British Library and the publisher. The number of records with abstracts is expected to increase as further agreements are reached. The abstracts when present are found on the 'Full record' page.
Copies of all the articles and conference papers listed on the database are available from the British Library Direct. There is a link to the British Library's ordering facility from each full record page within Zetoc.
Zetoc Search: enables you to search for citations of journal articles and conference proceedings via search forms, using one or more words in various fields, such as title, author and date.
Zetoc Alert: is a current awareness service that sends email Alerts matching your search criteria whenever relevant new data is loaded into the database. Alerts may include searches for journal titles and searches for authors' names and 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, which is usually within 72 hours of publication.
Zetoc RSS: is an alternative means to subscribe to feeds for individual journals, enabling you to view the journal title, article titles and basic article information. A link to the full Zetoc record is also incorporated into the feed. Within Zetoc, we provide a list of journals with an RSS link beside each journal. You can subscribe to the feed in various ways, depending upon your chosen RSS reader.
The Zetoc service is made available through Mimas at the University of Manchester.
Access is managed by the Athens authentication system and NHS staff may register for a username and password through their NHS library. If your NHS username and password does not work your Library helpdesk should be able to advise you.
From the Zetoc home page click on Zetoc Search. You will be given three choices:
Each of these provides a search form, with a number of fields you can use to specify your search, and then you can select individual articles to view the full record.
A search across all of the searchable fields: journal title; article title; paper title; authors; editors; publisher and conference data such as keywords, conference venue and sponsors.
A title search will search across both the journal article title and the conference paper title.
You may wish to enter significant words from the title or a complete title or phrase, which needs to be surrounded by quotation marks.
| Example | Description |
|---|---|
| “The Cost of Quality Patient Care” | full title of article, put in quotation marks to search just on this title |
| patient care | a search on patient AND care, both words must be present and can be in any order |
| “patient care” satisfaction | a search on a phrase and an additional word search, patient AND care must be together and in that order, satisfaction must also be present, but may appear anywhere in the title |
Enter single surnames or surnames with initials. You can use punctuation, as this will not affect the search. Do not enter two initials together without punctuation or a space between them.
| Example | Description |
|---|---|
| Shaw | single surname entry |
| Shaw Brown | both authors must be present in the record |
| “Shaw G B” | surname and initials of author |
| “Shaw G B” “Brown C L” | both authors must be present in the record |
| “Shaw G.B.” | Will retrieve the same as “Shaw G B” |
| “Shaw GB” | Will not retrieve any records, two or more initials together must have punctuation or a space between them. |
Enter the ISSN number for a journal, or the ISBN number for a conference paper.
This is a useful way to find the full contents for a journal or conference.
| Example | Description |
|---|---|
| 0020-8132 | Hyphen is optional |
| 0749245425 |
Enter a single date, a start date or a date range.
| Example | Description |
|---|---|
| 1998 | records just for 1998 |
| 1998- | records from 1998 onwards |
| 1998-2000 | records between a date range |
| Author(s): | Harder, B. N. |
| Article Title: | Evolution of Simulation Use in Health Care Education |
| Journal Title: | CLINICAL SIMULATION IN NURSING |
| ISSN: | 1876–1399 |
| Year: | 2009 |
| Volume/Issue: | VOL 5; NUMBER 5 |
| Page(s): | e169-e172 |
| Publication Frequency: | Annual: 1 issue per year |
| Publisher: | Netherlands : ELSEVIER SCIENCE B.V. AMSTERDAM |
| Language: | English |
| Dewey Class: | 610.73 |
| LC Class: | RC |
| BLDSC shelfmark: | 3286.380250 |
| Abstract: | The evolution of simulation use in nursing and health care education is a relatively short but a deeply rich one. Simulation use involves several areas and extends beyond the technology of simulators. Evolution of simulation includes technological advances, but it also includes advances in accessibility. Teaching and pedagogical advances, combined with advances in research, are all part of the evolution. As nursing curricula begin to use this tool to greater extents, the evolution and role of simulators are better understood. This article explores the evolution of simulation use in nursing education in the context of technology, accessibility, and teaching pedagogy. |
| Zetoc ID: | RN255647658 |
A search across all searchable fields: article title; author(s); journal title; ISSN; volume/issue; year published; publisher data.
Enter a word or significant words from the article title, or a complete title or phrase, surrounded by quotation marks. See the title search examples above.
See the author search examples above.
Enter a single word, significant words or a phrase, surrounded by quotation marks.
| Example | Description |
|---|---|
| nursing review | both words must be present, but not necessarily in this order |
| “nursing review” | searches for this phrase |
See the ISSN search examples above.
This searches for both the volume and issue number and you can enter one or both.
Generally both or just the issue number is given.
| Example | Description |
|---|---|
| 50 1 | search for volume 50, issue (or part) 1 |
| 5 | search for either volume 5 or issue 5 |
Usually this search is used in conjunction with volume and issue number.
| Example | Description |
|---|---|
| 245-254 | search for start AND end page |
| 245 | search for start OR end page |
See the year published search examples above.
| Authors: | Deho, A.; Nadel, S. |
| Paper Title: | Understanding shock |
| Keywords: | Intensive care |
| Conference: | Symposium: intensive care |
| Conference date: | 2009 |
| Journal Title: | PAEDIATRICS AND CHILD HEALTH |
| Year: | 2009 |
| Volume/Issue: | VOL 19; NO 3 |
| Page(s): | 97–102 |
| Publisher: | Medicine Publishing; 2009 |
| Language: | English |
| Material type: | Papers |
| BLDSC shelfmark: | 6333.450600 |
| ZETOC ID: | CN072027927 |
A search across all searchable fields - paper title, author(s), conference data such as keywords from the conference name, sponsor, venue or date.
Searches for the title of the conference paper, which may include reports, presentations and abstracts. See the title search examples above.
See the author search examples above.
Keywords are assigned to each conference (not each conference paper).
They can be individual words or phrases, such as iodine or “iodine deficiency”.
A search for the conference name, sponsor, venue, description and date can be made in this field.
| Examples | Description |
|---|---|
| “Methodological and clinical aspects of iodine determinations” | a search for a full conference title |
| radiology “computer applications” | a search on a phrase and an additional word search, radiology must be present, but may appear anywhere in the title computer AND applications must also be present, together, and in that order. |
| “international biometric society” 2004 | a search for the sponsor and the year |
Note: if your search retrieves more than 500 records, you will not be able to sort them.
Email your search results to an email account either from the Brief Records display or the Full Records display. The maximum number of results you can email is 500.
Records with Short labels contain abbreviated two-letter fieldnames e.g. AU for Author(s), TI for Article Title and so on, and may be more suitable for importing into reference management software. You should select this option if you wish to import records into EndNote using the filter available on the Zetoc website. Records with Long labels contain full–length fieldnames e.g. Author(s), Article Title etc.
The records are always emailed in Full Record format.
Note: if your search only retrieves one result, you will automatically be shown the Full Record.
It is possible to download the records from your search and save them in a plain text file suitable for importing into reference management software.
Records with Short labels contain abbreviated two–letter fieldnames e.g. AU for Author(s), TI for Article Title and so on, and may be more suitable for importing into reference management software. You should select this option if you wish to import records into EndNote using the filter available on the Zetoc website. Records with Long labels contain full–length fieldnames e.g. Author(s), Article Title etc.
Once you have a saved .txt file (text file), you can import it into your bibliographic software. However, please note that you must abide by the Zetoc terms and conditions of use.
This uses a wildcard, so it retrieves records where the term medical is present AND where any words beginning ethic are present, so it will retrieve both ethical and ethics.
You should remember to search for variant spellings as the database contains articles published in many different countries. For example, using labo* to retrieve the words labor and labour.
It is possible to view all the searches you have conducted during the current session.
Alongside your search term will be the number of hits (records retrieved), sort order and options.
Under Options you will see up to 4 hypertext links:
Note: if you previously tagged any of the records retrieved from this search, you will be able to email just those records. If you did not tag any records you will only be able to email them all.
Note: The British Library assigns keywords to each conference. You can only search for keywords in the conference search option.
Note: The Conference box allows you to search by conference name, date, description, venue and sponsor. Venue may be given as a country or a place name or both, e.g. Rome, Italy or just Italy. You may therefore not find all conferences held in a particular country, as the venue field may not include the name of the country.
Note: you must enter the volume and issue numbers in the order they appear in the records. Some journals will only have an issue number.
Your results will list all of the articles for one issue of Evidence Based Medicine.
You will be able to search Scirus, Copac and Google Scholar from this page.
Note: members of some institutions may be automatically signed in to Zetoc Alert when on-campus.
Note: Members of some organisations will be given an automatically generated name; you must remember this list name in order to modify the list in future.
Note: the button changes to In list and the journal title appears in your list in the left–hand frame. You can only have up to 50 journal titles in any list, but you can create as may lists as you wish.
Note: the left–hand frame shows you what your list contains.
RSS is a format for delivering web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers offer their content as an RSS Feed.
A Zetoc RSS Feed will typically show the journal title, ISSN and publisher, together with the article titles and authors and the details of the journal issue and page numbers to keep you up to date.
To receive a RSS Feed you need a RSS reader. This is a piece of software that can check a list of feeds from Zetoc and display any updated articles that they find. There are many different versions of RSS readers, some of which are accessed using your web browser, and some of which are downloadable applications. The About Zetoc RSS page provides more information and links to further help.
button beside the journal to come to an XML file that contains information about the journal.
Note: Zetoc RSS feeds are updated on a monthly basis. If a journal is weekly, then you will get four feeds each month. If a journal is bi-monthly (every 2 months), you will get a feed for the month that it first appears in the Zetoc database.
All articles and papers in Zetoc are available from the British Library Direct. Click on the link to Buy from the British Library at the bottom of each record and complete a short online registration before ordering your documents.
In addition, there is a link to Request a copy from your Institution's Library, which facilitates making a document supply request.
Last updated: September 2009. If you have any queries, comments or suggestions about the text or examples included in this workbook, please forward them to zetoc@mimas.ac.uk
 |
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 FAQ or contact the Helpdesk. Email: zetoc@mimas.ac.uk | Telephone: 0161 275 6109 Please read the Terms and Conditions. |
|