Using DeLCON
At present the DeLCON subscribes to 899 full-text e-resources of 16 publishers listed below. The member institutions are provided full access to these resources.
Electronic Resources Subscribed by the DBT Electronic Library Consortium (DeLCON Consortium)
These e-resources are accessible to the DeLCON member institutions only. The complete list alongwith their URL is given below:
| 1 | American Association for Advancement of Science |
(1 Journal) |
|
2 |
American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) |
(8 Journals) |
|
3 |
American Chemical Society (ACS) |
(37 Journals |
|
4 |
Annual Reviews |
(23 Journals) |
|
5 |
American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology |
(1 Journal) |
|
6 |
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press Journals |
(4 Journals) |
|
7 |
Informa Healthcare / Taylor and Francis |
(7 Journals) |
|
8 |
Lippincott William and Wilkins (LWW) / Wolter and Kluwer / OVID |
(11 Journals) |
|
9 |
Marry ANN Liebert |
(7 Journals) |
|
10 |
Nature Publications |
(40 Journals) |
|
11 |
Oxford University Press (OUP) |
(18 Journals) |
|
12 |
Springer India |
(237 Journals) |
|
13 |
Society for General Microbiology |
(3 Journals) |
|
14 |
Society for Hematology |
(1 Journal) |
|
15 |
Wiley-Blackwell |
(86 Journals) |
|
16 |
Elsevier Science (ScienceDirect) |
(415 Journals) |
How to Access DeLCON Electronic Resources? [ TOP ]
The access to electronic resources are IP-enabled for the member institutions. As such a user does not require 'Login ID and Password' to access resources available to his / her institutions. Instead, the resources are accessible to them anywhere on their Campus network. All the DBT's Centres have provided links to such resources through their website. The DeLCON also maintains a website (http://www.nbrc.ac.in/delcon.htm). Users are advised to use the Consortium websites for correct URLs.
While, the IP addresses provide by the DBT Centres are already registered with the publishers for access to e-resources, Institutions may obtain additional bandwidth either from the BSNL / VSNL or any other Internet Service Provider. However, IP addresses associated with the additional bandwidth should be communicated to the DeLCON Consortium as well as to the publishers for getting access to e-resource on additional IPs.
Finding E-Journals [ TOP ]
The DeLCON Consortium subscribes to 484 electronic journals at present which includes some of the complimentary journals also.
There are following ways to find out journals available under the DeLCON Consortium:
- The DeLCON website (http://www.nbrc.ac.in/delcon.htm) provides an interface for searching e-journals along with their URLs.
- Alphabetical list of journals is also available from the DeLCON website (http://www.nbrc.ac.in/delcon.htm).
- Some Institutions have Web sites with their own interfaces for e-journals accessible to them
Using E-Journals [ TOP ]
Electronic journals from different publishers are generally available in standard formats like HTML or PDF, and are made accessible in the same or similar ways. The web sites of publishers provides user interfaces that facilitates browsing of journals through table of contents and conduct searches on subject terms, words in title, authors, etc. Articles in e-journals are available in either HTML, PDF or PostScript formats. To view a document in PDF format, you need Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. The Adobe Acrobat Reader can be downloaded free from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html.
Follow the steps given below to use an electronic journal:
- Find the Web site for the e-journal you require (See "Finding e-journals");
- Look for link to the volumes / issues available for that journal, click at the required volume and issue;
- This will take you to the 'Table of Contents (ToC)' of selected volume / issue.
- Scroll through the table of contents (arranged according to page numbers) and find the article you require;
- Click on the full-text / PDF / HTML / Post-Script link to view the article;
- Print the article or save it to your disk.
While separate tutorials / guides are available for each resource subscribed by the Consortium, features and facilities generally offered by every electronic journal are as follows:
Navigation
All e-journals provide tools to navigate within a journal; from one volume to another; from one issue to another and from one journal to another published by the same publisher. Basic navigation icons like Home page, Online Help, Recent issues, Archives, etc. are mostly available on each page.
Most Internet browsers (like Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator) have a back button for returning to previous page. Most browsers are capable of searching a word or a phrase on a single page being displayed. Press "Control" and "F" simultaneously to invoke this facility. A separate tutorial is provided for navigating articles in PDF format.
Browse [ TOP ]
You can browse an e-journal just as you browse a print journal using electronic browsing features offered by most e-journals that are more convenient than conventional print journals. All e-journals provide Table of Contents (ToC) in HTML format for their current as well as for old issues. The ToC is a listing of articles in an issue in order of their appearance in the printed journals. Select a volume / issue for browsing its Table of Contents. Each article in a ToC contains link to its abstract and full-text (in PDF and / or HTML and / or PostScript formats). Click at either of them to view it. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to open a PDF version of an article. An HTML document can be opened directly in a browser.
Each entry of an article in a Table of Contents (ToC) appears in the format given below:
E-mail Alerts [ TOP ]
Most electronic journals facilitate setting-up of an email alert for the table of contents from a specific journal or group of journals. A user is generally required to create a personal profile or personal login where user may specify journal(s), subject area, frequency of email alert, etc. A user may set-up e-mail alerts for browsing.
Search [ TOP ]
Most of the journals provides two types of searches namely i) Simple search ii) Advanced search. Some journals also provide other searches like CrossRef search, Quick search, Citation search etc.
Simple Search [ TOP ]
The users are presented with one or two search query boxes with pull-down menu to use logical operators (AND, OR, NOT) or to restrict the search to chosen fields (i.e. author, title, abstract, etc.) or to expand it to all fields.
Advanced search [ TOP ]
The Advanced search can be used to search specific terms in certain fields such as abstract, journal title, article title, keywords, authors, references, publication year, volume number etc including searching across all fields at once. The advanced search allows a user to perform wide range of advanced searches. A user can use the normal boolean operators to define complex search criteria, with the Advanced search. A user can also choose how to view the results of a performed search. He/she is required to be thorough with techniques of conducting a search query. A user is responsible for correct syntax and use of valid combinations of query words and operators for getting the best results. There are options at the bottom of the page to view results by relevancy or date and in summary form or full information and also how many results you wish to have displayed on a page. Use the Search button to activate search query.
Search Techniques [ TOP ]
The following search techniques can be used on any of the Advanced search screens.
Boolean searching [ TOP ]
Boolean logic defines relationships between search terms. The Boolean search operators, AND, OR and NOT, allow a user to broaden or narrow the search results.
Operator Description [ TOP ]
1 |
AND |
Finds documents containing both words it joins |
2 |
OR |
Finds documents containing either of the words it joins. |
3 |
NOT |
Finds documents containing the word preceding it and excludes documents containing the word that follows it. |
Proximity search [ TOP ]
A Proximity search produces results that contain two or more terms that appear a specified number of words (or fewer) apart in the database(s). The proximity operator is placed between the terms that are to be searched.
A query by "HTML" <NEAR> publishing
will find documents that contain the word "HTML" and "publishing" within close proximity of each other (either before or after), i.e. it might fetch terms like "HTML and Electronic Publishing", Electronic Publishing Using HTML", or Publishing Electronic Text with HTML".
Deriving Maximum Benefits from E-resources [ TOP ]
The user's interface for most of the web sites of e-resources offers features and facilities like setting-up e-mail alerts and favourite journals, saving search strategies and search results, RSS feeds, etc. Use of such features and facilities help users to derive maximum benefits from the bibliographic databases and full-text resources online and offline. A user is required to create a personal profile or personal login to use these features and facilities.
E-mail Alerts [ TOP ]
Most bibliographic and full-text databases offer the ability to set up an e-mail alert for the table of contents from a specific journal or group of journals. A user can subscribe to e-mail alerts to get periodic emails with links to new content automatically that are added to the publisher's web site.While opting for this service care should be taken to choose the specific terms and subjects failing which a lot of information will be received, which may be found irrelevant later and lead to the waste of time
Types of E-mail Alerts [ TOP ]
Different publishers provide different types of e-mail alerts. Types of e-mail alerts offered by different publishers are mentioned below:
Table of Contents (ToC) Alerts: Most publishers offer Table of Content (ToC) e-mail alerts. The ToC Alerts are sent to subscribing user as soon as a new issue of a journal is published online.
Enhanced Alerts: Enhanced Alerts allow a user to design his / her alerts on selected subject categories or keywords. A user is alerted as soon as article(s) matching his / her criteria are published.
New Issue Alerts: A user gets e-mail alerts with link to new issues of chosen journals as soon as it is published.
Citation Alerts: A user receives emails when selected article(s) are cited by new article(s). such alerts include full citation details (title, author, journal, volume, issue, page number) of the citing article.
Publication Alerts: A user gets mail when there are new publications in selected subject areas.
eBook Series Alerts: A user gets mail when new eBooks in selected series is published.
iFirst Alerts: A user gets mail when new iFirst articles (articles that are accepted for publication) are available.
Database Alerts: A user gets an e-mail alert as and when the selected database is updated with new records.
Reference Work Alerts: A user gets mail as and when the selected Reference Works are updated.
Search Alerts: A user gets e-mail alert when new content matching his / her saved search expression are added to the publisher's site.
How to Get E-mail Alerts? [ TOP ]
A user is generally required to create a personal profile or personal login where user may specify journal(s), subject area, frequency of email alert, etc. Follow the steps given below to create e-mail alerts:
Go to the e-journal publisher's web site;
On the e-journal publishers web site, look for wording like: Email Alert, Table of Contents Alert, Alert or Personal Profile, My Profile, User Profile, etc. All major e-journal publishers offer some sort of email alert service;
The first time when a user requests an email alert or table of contents alert, he or she will be required to create a personal user profile / user login. A user will be prompted to provide details such as name, email address, postal address, field of interest, user name, password etc. Follow the steps given on the screen.
Once these details are filled-in and a login ID and password is assigned to the user, he / she is required to login on to the publisher's web site and then from there he / she can start creating his / her user profile. A user may select journal titles or subject areas that he / she would like to receive regular email alerts for, follow the steps on screen.
A user is required to create personal login before he / she is allowed to create an email alert. To create login follow the steps given below:
- Click on the Personal Login button and follow the steps;
- Login using Personal Login assigned in the above step 1;
- Create a new search using the Basic search form, click on the Search button;
- From the results screen, save the search as an Email Alert;
- The user is then prompted to enter in a name for his / her alert;
- Select the frequency of the alerts;
- Click on the Save Alert button
All e-journal publishers that provide an email alerting service, provide some kind of on-line help and /or FAQs.
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