*UPDATE* The Rogue Account has been blocked. Access via EZproxy is back to normal.
Due to a “security breach in [our] servers via organized hackers from R____a” (no need to name the actual country), ScienceDirect has blocked our EZproxy server IP. For now, please use myVPN to connect to ScienceDirect ejournals & ebooks if you are off campus. On campus, there should be no problem.
Stay tuned for updates.
***RESOLVED**
Just a heads up, UBC IT is reporting problems with myVPN and the UBC Network in some buildings. Please follow their Bulletins here.
Recently, several people have seen the following error message when using EZproxy:
Inter-institutional access failure. Please contact your system administrator for assistance
We are investigating the cause. In the meanwhile, clearing the cache & cookies from your browser appears to help.
If you’ve tried this and the problem persists, please contact us using the eResources & Access Help Form.
In case you weren’t watching the news this a.m., the British Columbia government says it plans to introduce free online textbooks for the 40 most popular post-secondary courses in the province.
All “… journal, book, book series, references and protocols content prevoiusly [sic] available on the old SpringerLink platform” will be moving to a new platform around the end of November. There should be no interruptions and plenty of re-directing of link. If you do run into problems, please contact eResources & Access via our Help Form.
You can read more about the migration here.
ERIC continues to work on its PDF problem. Here is the latest news, plus an email address where you can order a copy of a PDF if you can’t get it elsewhere:
In early August, the ERIC management team and the U.S. Department of Education became aware that some full-text documents in the ERIC Collection contained personally identifiable information. Sensitive information was found in multiple documents in a way that could not be easily isolated. The accessibility of this information to modern Internet search engines increases the risk that these details could be discovered and used improperly. In order to safeguard individual privacy it was necessary to temporarily disable access to ERIC full-text documents.
We are working to restore access to full text as quickly as possible while protecting individual privacy. While the vast majority of documents do not contain sensitive information, it remains necessary to identify and address each of those that do.
Each document must be checked to verify that it does not contain sensitive information. Given that there are more than 340,000 full-text documents in ERIC, this represents a significant undertaking. The U.S. Department of Education is in the process of hiring a team to help restore access in a fast and responsive manner. We anticipate that it will be possible to begin restoring access to large numbers of ERIC documents on a rolling basis later this fall.
An initial wave of more than 20,000 documents has already been restored. This first restoration consists of peer-reviewed full-text documents such as Institute of Education Sciences (IES) publications and peer-reviewed journal articles (EJs). At this time, we cannot provide a precise estimate for complete restoration of full text.
Priority is being placed on documents requested by ERIC users. If you would like to request a PDF to be returned online, please email ERICRequests@ed.gov referencing the document’s ERIC number (EDxxxxxx). We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience as we work to resolve the situation.
ERIC is committed to keeping you informed as we move forward with this effort. Check the alerts and Spotlight area of the ERIC home page at eric.ed.gov for updates.
Temporary System Limitations:
There are several known search and display limitations caused by the temporary restrictions on full-text access. Specifically:
As soon as the majority of full text is restored to the site, all features will return to normal operation.
“Physics Letters B, … has announced that the observations of the long-sought Higgs particle, hailed as one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time, have been published. The papers ‘Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC‘ and ‘Observation of a new particle in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson with the ATLAS detector at the LHC‘ are freely available online on ScienceDirect. –Knowledgespeak.com
**UPDATE — Problem solved**
Currently, there is a problem with article-level linking. What this means is that from our OpenURL resolver / Citation Linker page (see example here) the first link labelled “Article” leads to an error message. You need to click on the link labelled “Journal” and then go to the journal issue & article you want. We are working to fix this.
And just a reminder, the lower link labelled “Article” in the box that refers to DOIs is for a specific version of the article which we may or mat not have access to. That is why it says “Try this DOI link for POSSIBLE full-text if no Article or Journal links above”. In the case of Thieme, it generally points to their German site and we do not have access there.
Currently, there is a known problem with exporting citations directly from various ProQuest databases to RefWorks. This is being worked on, and we hope for a resolution soon. The problem seems to occur more often on campus and less often to off-campus folks working via EZproxy.
In the meanwhile, there are a couple work-arounds for exporting citations. If you need a work-around, please contact the RefWorks Help Group here in the Library at : lib-refworks@interchange.ubc.ca
As you probably know, full-text documents have been unavailable from ERIC for a few weeks now. Here’s the story…
“In early August we discovered that sensitive personally identifiable information appeared in some full text documents contained in the ERIC collection. Specifically, social security numbers and other highly sensitive information were found in multiple documents and in a way that could not easily be isolated. For that reason, we had to temporarily disable access to many full text documents.”
“We are seeking to restore access to documents as soon as possible. In order to restore access to ERIC, we have to check every document to see if it contains personally identifiable information.”
“Documents will be returned on a rolling basis and may take several weeks, but we are working as fast as possible.” —email from “ERIC Team”