Cambridge University Library

Ejournals are journals which are available electronically on the World Wide Web. Ejournals, providing full text of articles and features, can be divided into two basic categories:

• Parallel electronic editions - which correspond to the conventional printed editions
• Full electronic editions - which have no printed equivalent

These pages provide links to both types of journal. Links to journals providing table of contents information only are not included.

Access to electronic journals varies between service providers. For many, on-campus access, and in some cases off-campus access, is available without the use of a password. Where indicated below, a password is required. This will be a Raven password. For more information on Raven, view this FAQ. Off-campus access can usually be obtained through the use of a Magpie or VPDN accountor Raven password. Please consult the table below to see what is required to access the journals of each service provider.

To check your IP address, use the IP address checker.

First check the ejournals list for the titles and dates we subscribe to. We do not subscribe to all ejournals, and even if there are others from that provider that we do subscribe to, if something is not on this list, we do not subscribe to it. If the ejournal is on this list, check the access table to see if there are any access restrictions - for example, some ejournals cannot be accessed off-campus. The next step is to use the access table to check that you have and are using the correct password. Outside the University Library, only current staff and students of the University can access ejournals.

If you should be able to access a journal, and still cannot, fill in the problem report form. We will investigate the problem and get back to you.

There are copyright restrictions on ejournals in the same way as there are on paper journals. You are usually allowed to print or download one copy of one article from each journal issue for non-commercial purposes. This is usually described as 'fair use'. Please refer to the copyright statement of each service provider for more details of what you may legally use from each title. This statement will be on the websites of the individual ejournals.

It is your responsibility to make sure you stay within copyright law. Please be aware that in using the ejournals you are agreeing to the service provider's terms and conditions, including copyright, and that service providers do monitor use of their resources, scanning for evidence of copyright abuse. The service providers will ask us to suspend the access of anyone they do find breaking copyright law and we are obliged to comply with this request.

University Library staff have received queries concerning the legality of providing copies of articles for student use from electronic journals as these are not covered by the established CLA guidelines.

It is true that since electronic journals are not covered by the CLA Licence, all use made of them outside the normal statutory permissions is governed by the licence we have signed, if any, or by the publisher's standard terms and conditions.

Some of the larger electronic journal deals are negotiated nationally on behalf of the higher education sector by Content Complete Ltd on behalf of JISC. This arrangement is based on the successful two stage National Electronic Site Licence Initiative (NESLI and NESLI2). Wherever possible the final agreement will use the standard model NESLI2 licence, which allows:

'Authorised Users to incorporate parts of the Licensed Material in printed and electronic course and study packs hosted on a Secure Network in the course of instruction. Each item shall carry appropriate acknowledgement of the source, listing title and copyright owner'.

This would cover making a copy from an electronic journal to keep in a library to support the teaching of particular course. As with copies made from printed journals, the copies should not be kept permanently, but only for as long as they are needed.

Publishers who use the NESLI2 standard licence terms in include Elsevier, Cell Press and Blackwell Science.

There are many publishers who do not require subscribers to sign licences, but their standard terms and conditions of use apply. In these cases the scope for negotiating variations is very limited, as our only sanction is not to subscribe to the journal.

What this has highlighted is the need to publicise the licence conditions applying to our electronic journal collection, both in respect of study packs and the similar issue of using electronic journals to fulfil inter-library requests. We will be investigating ways of providing this information systematically to librarians in future. In the meantime if you have any queries about particular titles which you like to include in study packs, please contact Stephen Dale (smd15@cam.ac.uk).

A journal impact factor measures the frequency with which the average article from that journal has been cited in a particular year. The greater the average, the higher the impact factor of the journal. The impact factor of a journal is shown in the Journal Citation Reports, available through the Web of Knowledge.

Journal references are sometimes given with an abbreviated title. Journal Abbreviation Sources has lists of journal abbreviations and their meanings.