Q. What are general access policies for Project MUSE?
Project MUSE accommodates the needs of multiple researchers by allowing unlimited simultaneous access to its content, as well as the ability to retrieve content through interlibrary loan. All content from the print editions of the electronic books is full-text, accessible in PDF format, and fully searchable and retrievable at the chapter level. The UPCC Book Collections have no Digital Rights Managment (DRM) attached to them, allowing users at institutions which have purchased the books to print, copy, download, and save content at their discretion. The complete content of each journal is available in the database, including all charts, graphics, and images. Both books and journals are published electronically at the same time as their print counterparts and remain available permanently within the database
Q. How do users get access to the MUSE journals online?
On-campus access is primarily by IP (Internet Protocol) address. A library or institution subscribing to MUSE provides the institution's range(s) of IP addresses with the subscription order. MUSE also permits access by referring URL.
Off-campus access is validated through subscribing institutions. A user must be affiliated with a subscribing institution in order to access full-text articles in MUSE from off-campus. Users might login to MUSE through their library or institution's website or through a 'proxy' server. To login, a user selects their institution from the list of institutions registered to access MUSE through Shibboleth.
Shibboleth is available only for institutional collection subscribers, and it can be used by institutional subscribers to access their MUSE collection as well as single titles they subscribe to on the MUSE platform. Shibboleth is not available to institutions that subscribe only to single titles. A subscribing library can request access by referring URL or Shibboleth when placing a subscription order or by sending a request to MUSE Customer Support. Shibboleth access is available only by IP authentication.
Q. Who is allowed access to Project MUSE if we subscribe? Authorized users are defined as faculty, staff, students, alumni and library patrons of the subscribing institution. Distance learners, alumni, and other off-campus affiliates may access Project MUSE if their Internet access is through the campus network. Subscribing institutions are expected to enable access only to those people who are authorized users of the campus network.
Q. Can I access MUSE on my mobile device? MUSE can be accessed on mobile devices with a web browser, such as the iPhone, iPad, or Android.
Q. Can I access MUSE journal articles if I am an independent researcher not affiliated with a subscribing institution? A number of MUSE publishers have made articles from select journals available for short term rental via DeepDyve. Look for the "Rent from DeepDyve" on the top of the article page and follow the instructions after clicking on the link.
Q. Is interlibrary loan allowed? Facsimile images that are exact representations of the print journal pages or of printouts from the electronic database may be provided for interlibrary loan under CONTU guidelines and distributed in paper, fax, or digital form.
Q. Can we link directly to the content? MUSE encourages librarians and faculty members at subscribing institutions to link directly to MUSE content from electronic reserves and online class syllabi. No special permission is required to link. Be sure to verify the link from the MUSE site.
Q. Can Project MUSE articles be used in course packs? May I include them in my e-reserve? Project MUSE articles may be included in course packs and in electronic reserve only through a link to the article. The articles themselves may not be placed on electronic reserve or used in course packs. No special permission is required to link. Refer to the previous question about linking to MUSE article URLs.
Q. Are the paper and digital articles the same? Project MUSE digitizes scholarly journals, most of which have been published in paper form. The "edition of record" of these journals is still the paper form, the digital version being enriched with hypertext but otherwise not altered in any way. All content from the print edition is included in the online edition, with the exception of advertisements. If there is a correction made, we always flag those changes. Occasionally, an audio or video element may be offered in the online version as supplementary material to an article. In a case such as this, the availability of the supplementary material and its URL will be noted in the print article.
Q. Are all MUSE journals peer-reviewed? How is content selected? All journals participating in Project MUSE are peer-reviewed, scholarly titles. The basic criteria for participation in MUSE are that the journal must be peer-reviewed, be published by a not-for-profit press or scholarly society, and be a sensible fit with titles in the humanities, the social sciences and the arts. Project MUSE has a formal collection development policy for the selection of new titles. Surveys of subscribing libraries regarding subject areas for which they desire more online periodical content are also taken into consideration, as are specific title suggestions from participants and users.
Q. Does MUSE provide usage statistics? Project MUSE provides usage statistics for publishers, institutions, and consortia with a paid subscription to a MUSE collection. Librarians and consortium administrators may easily view their usage statistics online. An institutional login and password is required to access that institution's usage statistics.Monthly usage reports are made available on the 15th of the following month, in both Excel and XML formats. Access to statistics via the SUSHI protocol is also available.
Q. Does MUSE support SUSHI for accessing statistics? Yes, MUSE supports the SUSHI protocol for accessing statistics. To use SUSHI, an institution must set up a SUSHI client to submit an XML request to MUSE. MUSE will return an XML response with the statistics data. Information needed for setting up the SUSHI connection with Project MUSE is on the MUSE usage statistics page. Log in using your MUSE usage statistics login and password. Once you have logged in to your institution's page, look for the section "Parameters required to access statistics via the SUSHI protocol". There you will find the destination URL, your institution's reference ID and requestor ID needed to set up the connection with your SUSHI client.
Q. Does Project MUSE supply MARC catalog records or other tools to help catalogers? Yes, Project MUSE supplies catalog record sets in MARC21 format and created using AACR2 cataloging rules for each of the six MUSE journal collections and for each of the UPCC book collections at no cost to libraries. The records are full level description and include Library of Congress (LC) subject headings. .
Q. Can you notify me about new journal issues in MUSE? Our Journal Alert service provides both announcements of new titles launched in MUSE and new journal issues released. Subscribe to alerts for particular journals, subjects, or collections. Alerts are available as RSS feeds and as weekly e-mail announcements. To view a list of available RSS feeds and for more information about subscribing see Project MUSE RSS Feeds. The Journal Alerts service allows you to receive weekly e-mail announcements of new titles launched in MUSE and/or new journal issues released each week for particular journals, subjects, or collections. To sign up for weekly e-mail announcements see our Journal Alert Service.
Q. Does MUSE offer RSS feeds? MUSE offers several RSS feeds. The feeds provide subscribers with information about new journals and new issues of journals as they become available in MUSE.
Q. How can I set up Project MUSE as an OpenURL target? In order to link to Project MUSE as a target, set your software to link to the following URL, followed by an OpenURL-compliant query string: http://muse.jhu.edu/cgi-bin/resolve_openurl.cgi Any OpenURL 0.1 or 1.0 compliant string should work. Project MUSE's software will take the data given in the OpenURL and resolve it. The more complete the data contained in the OpenURL, the better able MUSE will be to resolve at the article level. Depending on the amount of data contained in the OpenURL, MUSE may return issue or journal records.
Q. How can I set up OpenURL links for article citations retrieved in Project MUSE? You will need to set up OpenURL links for article citations retrieved in Project MUSE searches for journals to which your institution does not subscribe. The institution-supplied link will appear on the turnaway page in MUSE and point the user to alternative resources for the articles.
Q. Where will my OpenURL links appear in MUSE? When a search is run to include all journals and/or all books in MUSE, the search results may include articles and/or books that you do not have full-text access to because they are not part of the Project MUSE journal or book collection to which your institution subscribes. Search results show the formats available for each item in the results and links for those formats. Journal articles are usually available in HTML and PDF formats. Book chapters are available in PDF format. Journals and books for which you do not have full-text access include another link in search results for the OpenURL link, that looks something like [OpenURL at Example University], or, [Find it! @ Example University]. When a user clicks on [OpenURL at Example University] or [Find it! @ Example University] they will be directed to your link resolver. Librarians are encouraged to supply MUSE with text they want to display for the link when they submit their OpenURL set up form. Default wording for the OpenURL link will be used if text specific for your institution is not provided.
Q. Do I need an id and password for the MUSE search engine when setting up federated searching (e.g., with Serials Solutions' Central Search product)? No, there are no access restrictions on the Project MUSE search engine. It is therefore freely available to search to anyone with or without a subscription. The only area of the MUSE site that requires a subscription is viewing the full-text of articles. No id and password is needed, therefore, to set up federated searching. MUSE can be searched with a variety of federated search products including Serials Solutions' Central Search, and WebFeat. MUSE now also supports any product compliant with the Z39.50 protocol for Information Retrieval.
Q. What is a referring URL? A referring URL is sent in the header of an HTTP request. When referring URL is used as a method of authentication, authenticated users connect from a referring page, to which only they have access, to a licensed resource. The provider of the licensed resource recognizes the referring URL from the HTTP request and allows the user access to the resource.
Q. How can my library gain online access to Project MUSE through EZproxy? Many subscribers have successfully implemented the protocol by using a configuration similar to the following: T Project MUSE U http://muse.jhu.edu DJ muse.jhu.edu
Q. How do I use the MUSE RSS feed when authenticating through a proxy server? You do not have to authenticate through a proxy server in order to subscribe to the RSS feeds. To subscribe to the MUSE feeds, simply copy and paste the URL for the feed into your RSS aggregator and subscribe.However, to view the full text articles from the links in the Table of Contents displayed in the MUSE RSS feed, you will have to authenticate via the proxy server. Subscribers using a proxy server have been successful accessing the full text by doing the following:
Q. Does MUSE offer a search plugin for web browsers? Yes, MUSE offers a search plugin that allows you to search Project MUSE directly from your browser. The Project MUSE search plugin adds MUSE to the list of search engines available in the search box in the upper right corner of your browser. The MUSE search plugin can be added to any browser that supports Sherlock and OpenSearch Search Engine Plugins. When using the search plugin, the search results will default to searching the entire MUSE collection of journals. To read about and install the search plugin, go to the Project MUSE Search Plugin page
