Kyoto University Library Network

Guide to E-Journal and Database Authentication System

• Overview
• Purpose
• Administration
• Attention

Overview

1. Due to the contract between publishers and Kyoto University, access to e-journals and databases (hereinafter, e-resources) is restricted exclusively to members of Kyoto University. Moreover, when accessing e-resources, authentication by means of a user account is necessary.
   
2. Authentication requires an ECS-ID (an account issued by the Institute for Information Management and Communication) or an SPS-ID (an account used as the Kyoto University Groupware ID). It is necessary for students to obtain an ECS-ID in order to access e-resources. If you are a faculty member or a staff member and you do not have an SPS-ID, please ask the General Affairs or Human Resources Division of your faculty.
   • ECS-ID (Student account)[e.g.: a0012345]
     https://www.iimc.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/services/cert/ecs_id/
   • SPS-ID (Kyoto University Groupware ID)[e.g. taro123yoshida]
     https://www.iimc.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/services/cert/sps_id/
3. When first accessing e-resources, a web page which details the agreement of the E-Journal and Database Authentication System (hereinafter, Authentication System) will appear. Please read and comply with the contents of the page, and complete the agreement procedure.
4. Once the agreement procedure has been completed, this web page will not appear again, and users may access e-resources with their ID and Password.

Purpose

From April 2011, the Authentication System has expanded the scope of potential users, for which reason it became necessary for KUINS-II users to authenticate by means of an ECS-ID or an SPS-ID, when accessing e-resources. The Authentication System has two purposes.

1. Quick investigation for inappropriate use

As shown below (“Attention”), the publisher suspends access to all of the e-resource, when inappropriate use such as unreasonable downloads is recognized. Once the access has been suspended, it is necessary to identify the incident and investigate its cause. The publisher also requires to supervise a user who caused, to take a future preventive measure, and to report them. The Authentication System helps quick investigation and restoration.

The “inappropriate use” does not mean use of charged journals only. The publisher is monitoring the access from the Kyoto University to its entire website regardless of the titles. Hence the access to free journals and articles is also involved as the subject for authentication.

2. Determination of the departmental expenses of e-resources

Subscription costs of common e-resources are contributed by all department of Kyoto University. The amount of fee of each department is determined depending by its usage of e-resources that is calculated by the access log.

All visit to e-resources, even indexes, abstracts, and free open access journals, seems to be a subject for authentication, because URL structure is too sensitive and complicated to divide into each journal. However, the access to these free contents is omitted in process of carefully calculation. Frequency of authentication is not used as the departmental expenses directly.

We apologize for any inconvenience with our Authentication System. Thank you for your consideration.

Administration

The Authentication System has been operated by "Subcommittee on Authentication System for Electronic Resources" established in the Kyoto University Library Network Board under "the Rules of Library Function in Kyoto University."
The Aims of this committee are to deal with improper use contrary to the license conditions, and to supervise other necessary matters for operating the Authentication System.

Attention

For Access to e-resources, the license conditions have set forth by publishers who provides.

All publishers prohibit the following actions;

• Systematic and programmatic download
• Usage beyond the private purpose
• Downloading or printing of an entire issue of a journal
• Reproducing, distributing, defacing and resale

Especially, the publishers are strictly monitoring excessive downloading. When inappropriate use is recognized, publishers immediately deny access from Kyoto University as soon as they give caution.

It takes a lot of time to restore the access because it is require investigating and reporting about the incidents. For the period of negotiation, all Kyoto University students, faculty and researchers lose the access to resources. Moreover, if inappropriate use happens frequently, Kyoto University would take a serious penalty.

In order to avoid such a situation, please use e-resources carefully.

The standard of allowable downloading depends on publishers or associations.
We strongly recommend reading abstracts before downloading so that it is possible to find which articles necessary.

So, please use electronic journals carefully.

When you receive an error message “Access limit exceeded”

This error message appears, when the library’s E-Journal and Database Authentication System has detected inappropriately frequent access to e-resources in a short period of time and blocked them before they reach the server of a publisher or a content provider.

This precautionary measure is taken to prevent potentially severe inconvenience that the access to the e-resources from the entire IP address range of Kyoto University may be suspended.

Under the terms and conditions of use for e-resources, publishers and content providers may suspend access from our IP address range when they have detected inappropriate use of the content. In that case, Kyoto University should be accountable about the cause of the incident, before the access is restored. This procedure may be delayed due to the time zone difference.

However, we also recognize that this response from the E-Journal and Database Authentication System may be activated accidentally in certain conditions(*). If you receive the error message unreasonably frequently, please consult the contact below. We appreciate your understanding and feedback about this matter.

(*) The E-Journal and Database Authentication System technically regards requests from different users as ones from the same user, when the requests reach the system through the same proxy server by coincidence, carrying the same IP address.