Access Services

Do you require access to Mimas services? This page explains how all types of user can access Mimas services.

Staff, students, researchers, teachers or instructors at UK Higher and Further Education institutions are entitled to access Mimas services free of charge as end users of authorised institutions.

For some services, the institution may need to have signed a site licence and paid a licence fee; however, a number are freely available to all users.

Access information

The tables below summarise how users can access Mimas services:

  1. Basic Access Information for All Mimas Services
  2. Federated Access (Shibboleth) Details for Mimas Services

See the summary of procedures for more service-specific information.

Basic Access Information for All Mimas Services
Service 'Open Access'? Access Methods Access Requirements
Campus IP Athens Federated Access (Shibboleth) User Registration Required? Site Licence Required?
Archives Hub Yes Not applicable Not applicable Not applicable Not applicable Not applicable
Census/CDU No No No Yes Yes Not applicable
Copac Yes Not applicable Not applicable Not applicable Not applicable Not applicable
ESDS International No No No Yes Yes Not applicable
Hairdressing Training Yes Not applicable Not applicable Not applicable Not applicable Not applicable
IESR Yes Not applicable Not applicable Not applicable Not applicable Not applicable
Intute Yes Not applicable Not applicable Not applicable Not applicable Not applicable
Web of Knowledge No Yes Yes Yes Not applicable Yes
JISC Historic Books No Yes No Yes Not applicable Yes
JISC Journal Archives No Yes No Yes Not applicable Yes
Jorum No No No Yes Yes Yes
JSTOR No Yes Yes Yes Not applicable Yes
JUSP No No No Yes Yes Not applicable
Landmap No No No Yes Yes Yes
UK PubMed Central Yes Not applicable Not applicable Not applicable Not applicable Not applicable
Zetoc Search No Yes No Yes Not applicable Not applicable
Zetoc Alert No Certain institutions only No Yes Not applicable Not applicable

Icon key: Yes = Yes; No = No; Not applicable = Not applicable.

Federated Access (Shibboleth) Details for Mimas Services
Service Login URL WAYFless URL Attributes User Accountability Required? Status
Mandatory Optional
Census (Casweb) http://census.mimas.ac.uk/
cgi-bin/wayf?param=C&idp=<EntityID>
  • eduPersonScopedAffilation
  • eduPersonTargetedID
 Yes In service
Census (CIDER) http://census.mimas.ac.uk/
cgi-bin/wayf?param=W&idp=<EntityID>
  • eduPersonScopedAffilation
  • eduPersonTargetedID
 Yes In service
Census (GeoConvert) http://census.mimas.ac.uk/
cgi-bin/wayf?param=G&idp=<EntityID>
  • eduPersonScopedAffilation
  • eduPersonTargetedID
 Yes In service
Census (LCT) http://census.mimas.ac.uk/
cgi-bin/wayf?param=L&idp=<EntityID>
  • eduPersonScopedAffilation
  • eduPersonTargetedID
 Yes In service
Census (SARs) http://census.mimas.ac.uk/
cgi-bin/wayf?param=S&idp=<EntityID>
  • eduPersonScopedAffilation
  • eduPersonTargetedID
 Yes In service
Census (Surpop) http://census.mimas.ac.uk/
cgi-bin/wayf?param=P&idp=<EntityID>
  • eduPersonScopedAffilation
  • eduPersonTargetedID
 Yes In service
ESDS International http://esds.mcc.ac.uk/
wayf.php?idp=<EntityID>
  • eduPersonScopedAffilation
  • eduPersonTargetedID
 Yes In service
JISC Historic Books http://jcolls.mimas.ac.uk/ wayf?
sso=<SSO_LOCATION>&destination=books
  • eduPersonScopedAffilation
  • eduPersonTargetedID
   Not applicable In service
JISC Journal Archives http://jcolls.mimas.ac.uk/ wayf?
sso=<SSO_LOCATION>&destination=journals
  • eduPersonScopedAffilation
  • eduPersonTargetedID
   Not applicable In service
Jorum User http://www.jorum.ac.uk/cgi-bin/
jorumwayf?param=E&idp=<EntityID>
  • eduPersonScopedAffilation
  • eduPersonTargetedID
  • givenName
  • sn
  • ou
  • mail
 Yes In service
Jorum Contributor http://www.jorum.ac.uk/cgi-bin/
jorumwayf?param=C&idp=<EntityID>
  • eduPersonScopedAffilation
  • eduPersonTargetedID
  • givenName
  • sn
  • ou
  • mail
 Yes In service
JSTOR http://www.jstor.org/
start-session?entityID=<EntityID>		 eduPersonEntitlement Not applicable In service
JUSP No
  • eduPersonScopedAffilation
  • eduPersonTargetedID
 No In service
Landmap http://landmap.mimas.ac.uk/
cgi-bin/wayf?idp=<EntityID>
  • eduPersonScopedAffilation
  • eduPersonTargetedID
  • givenName
  • sn
  • ou
  • mail
 Yes In service
Zetoc Search http://zetoc.mimas.ac.uk/
cgi-bin/wayf?param=S&idp=<EntityID>		 eduPersonScopedAffilation Not applicable In service
Zetoc Alert http://zetoc.mimas.ac.uk/
cgi-bin/wayf?param=A&idp=<EntityID>
  • eduPersonScopedAffilation
  • eduPersonTargetedID
 AthensPersistentUID Not applicable In service
Zetoc Home Page http://zetoc.mimas.ac.uk/
bin/wayf?idp=<EntityID>		 eduPersonScopedAffilation
  • eduPersonTargetedID
  • AthensPersistentUID
 Not applicable In service

Icon key: Yes = Yes; No = No; Not applicable = Not applicable.

Further information

'Open Access'

Non-academic access to these services is allowed – access is free to all users. The following Mimas services do not require any form of site licence, registration or subscription:

Campus IP (or 'On Campus')

Some Mimas services are set up so that if users are 'On Campus' (including being connected to their campus network via an institutional VPN or web proxy server), they do not need to enter a username and password because certain IP addresses are authorised to allow direct access.

Athens

The Athens system provides access management for subscription services provided by publishers and subscription agents.

Institutions either provide users with personal Athens accounts, or they may provide access to Athens-protected resources via an institutional login (e.g. via AthensDA). Users need to contact their 'home' institution to find out which method it adopts.

MyAthens enables users to see the set of Athens-protected resources that they are permitted to access.

Important information about Athens/OpenAthens and the 'Athens-to-Shibboleth Gateway'

Athens is a proprietary service that JISC will no longer be funding after 31 July 2008.

The Athens column in the table above refers to access via Athens directly, and not to access via the 'Athens-to-Shibboleth Gateway'.

Institutions that continue to subscribe to Athens/OpenAthens after 31 July 2008 can use Federated Access to access Mimas services, provided that they use the 'Athens-to-Shibboleth Gateway'. However, those institutions must join the UK Access Management Federation and tell the Federation that they wish to make use of Eduserv's OpenAthens service (utilising the 'Athens-to-Shibboleth Gateway') as an outsourced Identity Provider.

Please Note: The 'Athens-to-Shibboleth Gateway' might not provide all the functionality of a native Identity Provider in the UK Federation.

Federated Access

Federated Access (e.g. Shibboleth) allows users to securely access external services using the same username and password as they do for local services at their institution.

In order to use Federated Access, an institution must join the UK Access Management Federation and either implement Identity Provider software, or outsource that provision to a third party (e.g. Eduserv using OpenAthens).

Shibboleth has been implemented for a number of Mimas services; and depending on the institution, this may be the way that users will gain access to these resources.

JISC is currently in the process of moving away from the Athens service in favour of Federated Access Management. For more information about what this means for the JISC Community, see the following:

User registration

Some Mimas services require that users are registered in order to access a particular service. Users must accept relevant terms and conditions by registering online.

A summary of service-specific access details is available.

Site licence

A site licence is required for the relevant institution. The licence defines who the authorised users are as well as the terms and conditions that apply to their use of a particular service.

The site licence must be signed by an authorised signatory of an institution. To find out how to obtain a site licence, see the summary of service-specific access details.

WAYFless URL

WAYFless URLs can be inserted in institutional web pages to provide customised links for Federated Access to Mimas services so that users can bypass the WAYF.

The <EntityID> part of the URL should be replaced by the organisation's EntityID, or by the security domain (scope), in their metadata in the UK Access Management Federation.

An example of a WAYFless URL is http://zetoc.mimas.ac.uk/bin/wayf?idp=https://shib.manchester.ac.uk/shibboleth or http://zetoc.mimas.ac.uk/bin/wayf?idp=manchester.ac.uk, where 'https://shib.manchester.ac.uk/shibboleth' is the EntityID and 'manchester.ac.uk' is the scope belonging to The University of Manchester.

For JISC Historic Books and JISC Journal Archives the WAYFless URL format is slightly different. They use the SSO_LOCATION, which is the URL of the single sign on service of the Identity Provider to use for authentication (which can be found in the IdP configuration files or federation metadata).

So, for example, to use the University of Manchester IdP for JISC Historic Books you would use: http://jcolls.mimas.ac.uk/wayf?sso=https://shib.manchester.ac.uk/shibboleth-idp/profile/Shibboleth/SSO&destination=books, where 'https://shib.manchester.ac.uk/shibboleth-idp/profile/Shibboleth/SSO' is the SSO_LOCATION belonging to The University of Manchester.

Attributes

eduPersonScopedAffiliation
A user's organisational affiliation.
The unscoped value of eduPersonScopedAffiliation must be member or equivalent (i.e. student, staff, faculty or employee).
eduPersonTargetedID
A persistent user pseudonym for personalisation.
eduPersonPrincipalName
A persistent User ID across multiple services.
eduPersonEntitlement
An attribute used to convey extra properties, such as entitlement to particular resources.
A value of urn:mace:dir:entitlement:common-lib-terms is used to indicate that the holder of the entitlement has access to resources under the relevant contract terms (see the official description).

More information is available about eduPerson and the core attributes used in the UK Federation.

User accountability

Some Mimas services require, as a condition of access, that the user's End User Organisation declares that it offers User Accountability (see Section 6 of the UK Access Management Federation's Rules of Membership).

Summary of procedures

A full summary of procedures for accessing Mimas services is available.

If you have any further questions about how to access Mimas services, please contact the Mimas Helpdesk.