Journals

Printed journals

The journals collection was created for the purpose of supporting the study and research of students, researchers, and faculty members of the institution and thus it reflects the interests of its main users, who have contributed over time to its definition and development. 

Currently, the collection is subdivided into two main areas: the area of humanities and social sciences and the scientific area.

The humanities and social sciences journals, referred to as Periodici di Lettere (Humanities journals), currently occupie various rooms on the ground floor and first floor of the Palazzo della Carovana. Access to the collection is via the entrance to the Orologio-Carovana site passing through the tunnel that runs under the square, linking the two buildings.

The first floor houses a showcase containing the most recent issues of a selection of current journals considered of interest to users.
For the art journals a small showcase has been set up within the Art History collection at the Capitano site. 

In addiction, a small selection of journals, requiring specific storage conditions due to their format or publication frequency, is housed in the Sala Giornali (Newspapers Room) on the first floor (left wing) of the Palazzo dell’Orologio.

The Canonica site houses the latest years' issues of around a hundred current journals of sciences (Periodici di Scienze). The preceeding years' issues, referred to discontinued or closed titles, are stored in the Library Deposit at Ospedaletto (PI), which also houses some less frequently used humanities and social sciences journals. The deposit is accessible to staff only; users may request materials by filling in an online form (tutorial in Italian language); the material will be delivered at the Capitano site.

Journals are arranged on the shelves in alphabetical order by title (excluding initial articles). If a Humanities journal undergoes a significant title change, all issues under the new title are placed immediately after those with the original title. However, for the sciences journals, all the years' issues are collected in alphabetical order under the latest title.

This information is pointed out in the catalog record: in the Details section, under Shelf Position, you can find the title under which the journal is placed. In Details are also listed the years' issues holded; you can check any missing issues under the Holdings label.

Example of a Humanities/Social Sciences journal record:
 
 
Example of a journal of Sciences record:

The catalog does not always provide detailed information on the specific copies held for all titles. To obtain more complete information on the library’s holdings, always check the Details section. If you cannot find what you are looking for, please contact the Journals collection staff; your feedback is valuable in improving the service.
 

Electronic journals

For the community of the Scuola Normale, electronic journals are a strategic resource, since they are a priceless and undeniable source of informations and updating. 

The Scuola Normale invests sizeable financial resources in e-journals. With regard to the economic sustainability of acquisition models, the topics of Open Science are of increasing importance, since they have bearing on the definition and development of electronic collections as well as the access services of the research libraries.

Description of the collection

The Library subscribes to a substantial number of journals (some tens of thousands) for access to a wide selection of academic electronic journals from Italian and non-Italian publishers covering all disciplinary areas, as a support for the study, educational and informational needs of the community of the Scuola Normale.

The Library acquires its subscription in the following ways:

• subscription to individual journal titles;
• subscription to or acquisition of disciplinary collections (current or retrospective) of a publisher/scientific society, or an aggregator (often evolving from a bibliographic database into a full-text database);
• subscription to or acquisition of standard commercial packages or all the journals of a publisher (Big Deals). Since 2020, most of these contracts have been signed by the Library under the “transformative" model. 

Through Big Deals, which are negotiated at the national level under the CARE-CRUI coordination, the Library also provides access to disciplinary areas beyond the core research fields of the Scuola Normale. These bibliographic resources favour the interdisciplinary approach to research promoted by the Scuola Normale.

By subscribing to current collections, publishers allow access not only to the latest years' issues but also to previous ones, often dating back to the mid-1990s. Hence, for a sizeable number of journals, the Library makes available all the contents published from the first volume onward, through the integration of subscription to individual journals with current and retrospective collections.

Information resources

All the disciplinary sectors belonging to the three faculties of the Scuola Normale are covered. In addition to the multidisciplinary packages of the main international scientific publishers (Elsevier, Wiley, Springer, Cambridge University Press), the Library subscribes to various specialist packages, including the following:  

Cooperative Digitalization Projects

The Library also subscribes to some of the most important cooperative selection and digitalization projects of the previous years' issues of academic journals, such as JSTOR and Journals Archive Online (ProQuest) which, despite their multidisciplinary profile, specialise above all in the humanities and social sciences.  

Lastly, there is an increasing availability of open access journals selected by the Library from among those subjected to peer-review process.

Access

Electronic journals can be accessed through the Online Journals service, by browsing in the A-Z list or searching directly for the title or the ISSN code. This tool is particularly useful above all when you already know the journal's title or part thereof. For more advanced searches, you can apply filters and facets available on the SEARCH interface. 

For each journal title, by clicking on Online Access you can view the information relating to the full-text availability, coverage periods, and access conditions. 

The same journal title may be accessible via several full-text services (such as the publisher’s or aggregator platform), with varying temporal coverage depending on the specifications of the subscription agreements. 

You can also access the journal contents by searching the database searches service or via academic search engines such as Google Scholar. Also in these cases, access is simple and direct thanks to the links generated by the providers. 

Licenses to use terms

Commercial Electronic Journals

The terms, duration, and conditions regulating the use of commercial electronic journals are defined in the licensing agreements signed by the Library and the publishers.  

If these conditions are violeted, the publishers, who holds the copyright of the contents, can suspend access to the resources by the Scuola Normale's entire community of users. 

Most licenses follow a standard structure, defining which uses are allowe/not allowed and which users are authorized, in this case alla those with a formal relation to the Scuola Normale. 

In general, licenses allow authorised users to search, download, and print contents, for non-commercial purposes only that is for study and research. However, large scale and systematic downloading of contents is strictly prohibited.

License terms can be viewed directly in SEARCH, in the View section of the bibliographical record, in correspondence with the specific access service provided for each journal title.

 Open Access Electronic Journals

The terms of use and reuse of open access electronic journals are much more favourable for end users than those proposed by commercial publishers. The most commonly found licenses for these journals are Creative Commons (CC) licenses, which can be varied in accordance with the type of use defined by the copyright holder.

Authentication

You can access online journal content by any device connected to the SNS network or at the sites of the Scuola Normale or remotely using the VPN or IDEM-GARR services.  

Archivio Collettivo Nazionale dei Periodici [National Collective Archive of Journals] (ACNP)

Electronic journals subscribed to by the Scuola Normale can also be searched in the ACNP catalog. The access services available and the corresponding coverage are indicated for each title.