July 2014
Availability Icons and Filters – New Functionality!
We are pleased to add Availability icons and filters, which offer users granular information about their access rights to content, and an increased ability to customize which content they want to see as they use our products.
- What are the Availability icons, and what do they tell me?
The Availability icons now appear alongside each content item in your search and browse results, and alongside links to content. They allow you to see what online access rights you have to each piece of content OUP publishes on each site.
- Unlocked: You or your institution has paid to see this content in full
- Free: OUP has made this content item freely available in full
- Restricted: You or your institution has not paid to see this content in full
- What are the Availability Filters?
The icons used for Availability icons also appear as filters within the left hand ‘Refine Your Results’ panel, allowing users to narrow or expand their search or browse results by online availability.
OUP sets the default to show content of all availability types, to aid full discoverability of our content. However, some products or sales models institutions are offered the ability to change that default setting for authenticated users (for example, to show just full content results).
- Where has the ‘Show Full Text Results Only’ filter gone?
The ‘Show Full Text Results Only’ filter has been replaced by the more granular Availability Filter functionality. Institutions who have chosen to set ‘Show Full Text Results Only’ as a default in their subscription settings will see the same content as they did before, but it will now be flagged as either ‘Unlocked’ or ‘Free’ and those two filter boxes will be checked by default upon authentication.
- Can individuals choose to over-ride default Availability settings?
Yes, individuals can widen their search results by checking any Availability box and updating their search. This is no change from the previous ‘Show Full Text Results Only’ behavior.
- I don’t understand why I’m seeing icons next to content in my results which don’t match the filter I’ve applied?
This is because at the moment, we have a single icon for each content or book result so one has to take precedence where two availability states are true for one piece of content...
The following single-icon selection applies to books in the results of authenticated users:
- if a work contains any unlocked articles, unlocked will show
- if a work contains articles with a mix of Restricted / Free content, the work will show as Restricted.
In cases where the user has paid-for access to a work it is not possible to have a work with a mix of unlocked and restricted articles.
The following single-icon selection applies to books in the results of unauthenticated users:
- if a work contains any Available To Buy articles, Available To Buy will show
- if a work contains articles with a mix of Restricted / Free content, the work will show as Restricted.
- Why can’t I see any content when I browse for Overviews or Timelines?
If the Availability filter for ‘Free’ has been deselected (by you or your institution), then the free Overviews and Timelines will no longer appear in your search and browse results. You will still be able to access them from direct links from the content, but not via your results panel unless you check the ‘Free’ Availability filter box.
Please direct any questions or feedback to oxfordonline@oup.com.
New Oxford Reference Library Title
The following first edition has also been added to Oxford Reference Library as part of this July update, available through institution title-by-title perpetual access. Reference Library titles are released as soon as they are available:
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Science, and Technology in Islam
