Frequently Asked Questions

If you are a current Project MUSE partner please login for more personalized information.

For information about your institution's available programs and holdings, go to https://about.muse.jhu.edu/login to login.

Project MUSE’s new integrated search engine defaults to searching just the content to which your institution subscribes or has purchased. Search results clearly indicate which full-text content is accessible to users via their library. Users have the option to view only book results or only journal results, and to expand the results to all book and all journal content currently on the Project MUSE platform.

Search results can be filtered by the following criteria:

• User access,
• Content type: book and/or journals,
• Publisher,
• Book Series,
• Journal,
• Author,
• Language,
• Research Area,
• Publication year

When the HTML article is open in your browser, the "View Citation" button can be found at the top of the page, under the article information.

Navigate to https://muse.jhu.edu/account. Fill out the form at the bottom of the page to create a personal user name. This ID will allow you to save journal issues, articles, books, and chapters to your personal MyMUSE Library, as well as access past searches and viewed content.

Yes. Anyone can create a Project MUSE user name and account. This account will allow you to save items you find in your searches to your personal library, reference past searches, and view past items you have viewed.

Access to text articles and books on the Project MUSE site is limited to your institutional and personal subscriptions and purchases. Full text Open Access books and articles are available to all users.

Journal issues and books can be saved to MyMUSE Library by clicking on the "Save" button on the table of contents of the book or journal issue. Articles and book chapters can be saved by clicking their individual "Save" buttons next to their entries in the table of contents. Articles can additionally be saved by clicking the "Save" button at the top of the article's View page.

When logged into your account, click on your user name in the top right corner of the Project MUSE website. This will open your "Saved Items" page, that includes everything you've saved to your MUSE library.

When logged into your account, click on your user name in the top right corner of the Project MUSE website. This will open your "Saved Items" page. In the left hand navigation panel click on the "Search History" button.

While your personal search history is open you can select individual items to delete from your history by selecting the check box of the items you wish to remove from the center list of searches, and then clicking "Delete Selected" in the left hand navigation panel.

To delete all items from your personal search history while your search history is open, click the button named "Delete ALL" under "Search History."

Journals

On-campus access is primarily by IP (Internet Protocol) address. A library or institution subscribing to Project MUSE provides the institution's range(s) of IP addresses with the subscription order. Project MUSE also permits access by referring URL. At this time Project MUSE does not accept IPv6 ranges. Johns Hopkins University Campus IT has created a project to allow IPv6 traffic to the MUSE platform, but at this time they do not have a timeline for completion.

Off-campus access is validated through subscribing institutions. A user must be affiliated with a subscribing institution in order to access full-text articles in Project MUSE from off-campus. Users might login to Project MUSE through their library or institution's website or through a 'proxy' server. Another way for the user to authenticate is to use his/her institutional login prior to accessing the full text articles in Project MUSE. Project MUSE supports authentication through the single sign-on method provided by Shibboleth.

To login, a user selects his/her institution from the list of institutions registered to access Project MUSE through Shibboleth. If their institution is not listed, they should refer to their librarian for assistance.

Shibboleth is available only for institutional collection subscribers, and it can be used by institutional subscribers to access their Project MUSE collection as well as single titles they subscribe to on the Project MUSE platform. Shibboleth is not available to institutions that subscribe only to single titles.

A subscribing library can request access by referring URL or Shibboleth when placing a subscription order or by sending a request to Project MUSE Customer Support. 

Books

For institutional purchasers of Project MUSE Book Collections, access for your authorized users is supported via the following methods: IP (Internet Protocol) address authentication, referring URL, and Shibboleth. Institutions are asked to provide the IP range(s) associated with their institutional network at the time a purchase order is placed. A library can request access by referring URL or Shibboleth when placing an order for a Project MUSE book collection or single title, or at any time by sending a request to Project MUSE Customer Support. Project MUSE does not support institutional access via ID and password.

At this time, Project MUSE Book Collections and book single titles on Project MUSE are only available for purchase by institutions; books are not offered for sale to individual users.

Project MUSE also offers books for purchase as single titles that are not included in any of the collections. This is a new program whereby publishers contribute additional titles to the Project MUSE platform and the books are sold only as single title purchases (never part of a collection). To determine titles held in the book collections and those that are not in collections, please see Book Holdings on the Project MUSE Holdings Tool.

Individuals

Subscriptions are available to individuals for a selection of Project MUSE journals from University of Hawaii Press and Johns Hopkins University Press.

Individuals can also order online subscriptions through the Johns Hopkins University Press for selected journals from Catholic University of America Press, Georgetown University Press, Ohio State University Press, Penn State University Press, and University Press of Florida.

Authorized users are defined as faculty, staff, students, alumni and library patrons of the subscribing institution. Distance learners, alumni, and other off-campus affiliates may access Project MUSE if their Internet access is through the campus network. Subscribing institutions are expected to enable access only to those people who are authorized users of the campus network.

Remote access can be offered by setting up a proxy server (for example, EZproxy is one brand of proxy server), referring URL, or Shibboleth. Please note that at this time Shibboleth consortia do not make their services available to high schools.

Because of the great variety in campus computing environments Project MUSE cannot advise institutions about which approach to use nor can Project MUSE provide instructions for the configuration of a remote access solution. Useful information can be found on the internet in places such as OCLC, Wikipedia and YouTube; however, you will need to contact your institution's or system's tech support for assistance.

Authorized users have access to the full text of all journals in the journal collection to which their institution subscribes. Journal collections range from including all journals to including subsets of all titles on Project MUSE. Generally, you have access to the journals showing the green checkmark icon, which means ‘You have access to this content’.

Project MUSE is an aggregator of ebook and ejournal content. We are neither the primary publisher nor the copyright holder of the content we offer on the MUSE platform. We do not work directly with authors so we do not charge Article Processing Fees or Book Processing Fees, nor can we offer APC/BPC offsets/credits to our library customers.

Project MUSE has worked with non-profit publishers and libraries for 25 years within a sustainable publishing model. We have expanded this model to accommodate and promote Open Access (OA) content that our publishers would like to have hosted on the Project MUSE platform. When content comes to us as OA it is not put into the collections that we sell. When content in the collections we sell goes OA we back it out of the sales price.

Subscriptions to many journals are available as single title subscriptions on the Project MUSE platform. Read the Terms and Conditions for Single Title Online Subscriptions to understand the rights, responsibilities, authentication, and other terms that apply. Contact Journals Customer Support with any questions.

Both the Project MUSE book and journal licenses allow for alumni access to content. Alumni access is provided at no additional charge to the institution. Institutions are responsible for setting up access for their alums. It may be helpful to remember that Project MUSE supports a number of Shibboleth federations including the U.S.

Project MUSE can be accessed on mobile devices with a web browser, such as the iPhone, iPad, or Android. We are continually optimizing the Project MUSE website to provide the best mobile user experience.

Users who are not affiliated with a subscribing institution may purchase articles from selected journals through our article sales program. Article fees are set by each publisher and may vary from journal to journal.

Some institutions provide access to Project MUSE for their alumni. If applicable, check with your institution to see if this service is available.

Check with your local public library to see if services such as Interlibrary Loan are available to access MUSE content.

Otherwise, users not affiliated with a subscribing institution can search Project MUSE content, set up a MyMUSE account, save or email article citations, and sign up for email alerts when new journal and book content become available on Project MUSE.

Project MUSE electronic books are in enhanced web-ready PDF format, searchable and retrievable at the chapter level. A table of contents on each individual book page allows for access to each chapter-level PDF, and for searching within the individual book for the chapters containing the search term(s). Book front matter and back matter is represented in separate, clearly-labeled PDF files on each book page. All content from the print edition of the book is included in the digital edition.

Initially, all of the books in the Project MUSE collections are also expected to be published in print. All content from the print edition is included in the online edition. Occasionally, an image may be redacted due to issues with permission to use the image in electronic form.

There are no embargoes on the release of digital editions of books in Project MUSE. Our goal is to release the electronic book simultaneously with its print edition. Because Project MUSE relies on the print edition publishers to supply files to us in timely manner to facilitate electronic publication, the digital editions may appear up to two weeks later than the print edition release date.

Just as we have done for many years with Project MUSE journal content, Project MUSE makes available metadata files for our digital books to numerous abstracting, indexing, and discovery services. A complete list of our current third-party discovery partnerships is available. We welcome your suggestions for additional services with which we may cooperate to make our books more discoverable to users.

Yes, single-title purchasing of selected digital books is available through Project MUSE's partnership with GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO. Titles in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences may be discovered and ordered via the GOBI acquisition and collection management interface. Using GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO, library customers may discover all the Project MUSE titles offered for individual purchase, and may elect to receive new title notification or have Project MUSE titles automatically delivered through the GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO approval program.

All URLs in Project MUSE are stable, and adhere to a standard format.

Project MUSE encourages linking directly to Project MUSE books and book chapters from electronic reserves, courseware systems, and web-based syllabi. No special permission is required to link. Be sure to verify the link from the Project MUSE site.

Please review the Project MUSE licensing agreements for complete details on permitted and not permitted uses of Project MUSE journals and books.

Libraries with subscriptions to journals on MUSE, or which have purchased books on MUSE, may use those materials to fulfill requests from other libraries, a practice commonly called Interlibrary Loan. The library agrees to fulfill such requests in accordance with Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act. Requests may be fulfilled using electronic, paper, or intermediated means.

All content level URLs in Project MUSE are stable, and adhere to a standard format.

Project MUSE encourages librarians and faculty members at subscribing institutions to link directly to Project MUSE content from electronic reserves and online class syllabi. No special permission is required to link. Be sure to verify the link from the Project MUSE site.

Project MUSE articles may be included in course packs and in electronic reserve only through a link to the article. The articles themselves may not be placed on electronic reserve or used in course packs. No special permission is required to link. Refer to the previous question about linking to Project MUSE article URLs.

Project MUSE owns the Project MUSE-generated PDF articles and they may not be used in repositories. The author of an article included online in Project MUSE should consult his/her agreement with the journal publisher to determine whether the publisher allows a copy of the article to be included in a repository. If both the author and the publisher have provided permission for deposit in a repository, they must provide their own electronic file. Project MUSE owns the Project MUSE copy and permission is not granted for the Project MUSE version in repositories

There is no DRM on the Project MUSE electronic book files.

Project MUSE digitizes scholarly journals, most of which have been published in paper form for many years. The "edition of record" of these journals is still the paper form, the digital version being enriched with hypertext but otherwise not altered in any way. All content from the print edition is included in the online edition, with the exception of advertisements. If there is a correction made or an errata to announce, we always flag those changes. Occasionally, an audio or video element may be offered in the online version as supplementary material to an article. In a case such as this, the availability of the supplementary material and its URL will be noted in the print article. Presently, there are four electronic-only journals in Project MUSE: Advertising and Society Review, Postmodern Culture, Theory & Event, and Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History.

All journals participating in Project MUSE are peer-reviewed, scholarly titles. The basic criteria for participation in Project MUSE are that the journal must be peer-reviewed, be published by a not-for-profit press or scholarly society, and be a sensible fit with titles in the humanities, the social sciences and the arts. Project MUSE has a formal collection development policy for the selection of new titles. Surveys of subscribing libraries regarding subject areas for which they desire more online periodical content are also taken into consideration, as are specific title suggestions from participants and users. Publishers wishing to have their journal considered for participation in Project MUSE can use our online submission form. If you would like to recommend a title for Project MUSE please use our Recommendation form.

Books included in the Project MUSE collections are published by distinguished university presses and scholarly publishers. Each participating publisher selects the books it submits for inclusion in the collections. These books are peer-reviewed prior to publication by leading scholars in the field, and subject to a vigorous editing process by the print publishers. Participation in the book initiative is limited to not-for-profit publishers with rigorous peer review procedures.

Project MUSE is committed to providing a web site that is accessible to all individuals and continually works to improve access for people with disabilities. Please check our Accessibility and "Section 508" page for the latest information.

The phrase "archive only" means that the journal no longer contributes new issues to Project MUSE. There are a number of different reasons for a journal to stop contributing new issues to Project MUSE. For example, the journal might have been acquired by a commercial publisher or a publisher that does not participate in Project MUSE, the publisher might have other reasons for choosing not to have that journal participate in Project MUSE any longer, or the title might have ceased publication. Even though a journal does not contribute new issues to Project MUSE all previously launched issues of that journal will remain online and accessible to subscribers. Please also see our Archiving and Preservation policy for further information.

Project MUSE is committed to providing permanent maintenance and preservation of all the digital files in the Project MUSE database. No journal content published online in Project MUSE will be removed or made inaccessible to current, paid subscribers. All Project MUSE partner publishers are contractually bound to allow any journal content published in Project MUSE to remain permanently in the database, even if they should choose to discontinue their relationship with Project MUSE.

Project MUSE maintains both local back-up servers and a mirror server offsite, in Australia. Further, Project MUSE works with other providers to arrange storage of backup copies of all digital files at their sites to ensure future availability.

Libraries own the material from the Project MUSE journal collection(s) to which they subscribe. For details on the specific archiving rights of subscribing libraries, please see Section V. Archiving, of the Project MUSE Institutional Licensing Agreement.

Books on Project MUSE are archived and preserved in Portico. Portico and Project MUSE have partnered to secure the long-term preservation of ebooks published online in Project MUSE. The archiving and preservation is all inclusive meaning that all books from all publishers are included in Portico's digital preservation program and will remain available for future scholars, researchers, and students.

Project MUSE book collections and single titles are sold on a purchase basis, and libraries own the books they purchase. Libraries have perpetual access rights to the books purchased on Project MUSE.

Unlimited downloading and printing of book chapter PDF files is included in your purchase of Project MUSE book collections. There are no restrictions on downloads or printing.

Project MUSE provides usage statistics for publishers, institutions, and consortia with a paid subscription to a Project MUSE journal collection or purchase of a Project MUSE book collection. Usage statistics are not available for single title subscriptions or for free trial access.

Librarians and consortium administrators may easily view their usage statistics online.

An institutional login and password is required to access that institution's usage statistics. Contact Project MUSE Customer Support to request a login and password if your institution does not have one already. Institutions may access their usage statistics tool at any time of day, seven days a week. Monthly usage reports are made available on the 15th of the following month, in both Excel and XML formats. Access to statistics via the SUSHI protocol is also available.

Project MUSE usage statistics are compliant with Release 5 of the COUNTER Code of Practice (COP).

For more information on COUNTER, please visit their web site www.projectcounter.org.

Yes, Project MUSE supports the SUSHI protocol for accessing statistics. To use SUSHI, an institution must set up a SUSHI client to submit an XML request to Project MUSE. Project MUSE will return an XML response with the statistics data. Information needed for setting up the SUSHI connection with Project MUSE is on the Project MUSE usage statistics page. Log in using your Project MUSE usage statistics login and password. Once you have logged in to your institution's page, look for the section "Parameters required to access statistics via the SUSHI protocol". There you will find the destination URL, your institution's reference ID and requestor ID needed to set up the connection with your SUSHI client.

For more information please visit the NISO SUSHI standard.

Yes, Project MUSE supplies catalog record sets in MARC21 format and created using AACR2 cataloging rules for each of the Project MUSE journal collections and for each of the Project MUSE book collections at no cost to libraries. The records are full level description and include Library of Congress (LC) subject headings. Updates to the records will be added periodically as new journals and books are launched during the year. You may download the records from the Project MUSE MARC Records Request page.

Our Journal Alert service provides both announcements of new titles launched in Project MUSE and new journal issues released. Subscribe to alerts for particular journals, subjects, or collections.

Yes. Among the resources that Project MUSE supplies are online and downloadable PDF instructional guides. Project MUSE also offers free materials such as posters and discipline brochures to distribute to campus user groups, and copies of Project MUSE News, which libraries can order using the Request Promotional Materials form. See the Librarians page for links to these and other resources.

The institution name displays on all pages on the Project MUSE site, at the top of each page. We detect the institution providing access via IP address.

The institution name does not display on pages that are freely available for viewing by the public and where we do not detect the IP address of the institution providing access.

If you would like to change the way your institution's name displays on the Project MUSE site, please contact Project MUSE Customer Support, indicating how your institution name currently displays and specifying how you would like the name to display.

Project MUSE offers a variety of ways to search and find journal and book content. Start your search using either the simple search box that appears on each page of the Project MUSE site or go to the advanced search page (link appears on upper right of each page) to construct a more targeted search. Both simple search and advanced search allow you to use facets to modify your results for content type, language, journal name, date, publisher and more. For more details on simple search, advanced search and search facets, please see the index of search topics in the Search Help.

At the present time, Project MUSE does not load book MARC records into WorldCat. We do understand that libraries may want to report their holdings using WorldCat. The Project MUSE MARC records are freely available and our policy is that libraries are free to load our records into WorldCat if they want to.

In order to link to Project MUSE as a target, set your software to link to the following URL, followed by an OpenURL-compliant query string:

https://muse.jhu.edu/cgi-bin/resolve_openurl.cgi

Any OpenURL 0.1 or 1.0 compliant string should work. Project MUSE's software will take the data given in the OpenURL and resolve it. The more complete the data contained in the OpenURL, the better able Project MUSE will be to resolve at the article level. Depending on the amount of data contained in the OpenURL, Project MUSE may return issue or journal records.

If you are having problems using our OpenURL resolver, please Request Technical Help.

You will need to set up OpenURL links for article citations retrieved in Project MUSE searches for journals to which your institution does not subscribe. The institution-supplied link will appear on the turnaway page in Project MUSE and point the user to alternative resources for the articles. To set up links to your OpenURL compliant linking server for the alternative resources, complete the information requested on our Enable OpenURL Links form. Your request will be processed in two business days. Please note that Project MUSE supports versions 0.1 and 1.0 of OpenURL.

When a search is run to include all journals and/or all books in Project MUSE, the search results may include articles and/or books that you do not have full-text access to because they are not part of the Project MUSE journal or book collection to which your institution subscribes.

Search results show the formats available for each item in the results and links for those formats. Journal articles are usually available in HTML and PDF formats. Book chapters are available in PDF format. Journals and books for which you do not have full-text access include another link in search results for the OpenURL link, that looks something like [OpenURL at Example University], or, [Find it! @ Example University]. When a user clicks on [OpenURL at Example University] or [Find it! @ Example University] they will be directed to your link resolver. Librarians are encouraged to supply Project MUSE with text they want to display for the link when they submit their OpenURL set up form. Default wording for the OpenURL link will be used if text specific for your institution is not provided.

Yes, Project MUSE does support and is compliant with KBART Phase II Recommended Practice.

Refer to NISO KBART pages for more detailed information about how KBART Phase II focuses on the provision of higher quality data and better linking opportunities between members of the knowledge base supply chain.

Project MUSE provides article level DOIs only for journals whose publishers opt to include DOIs for their journals. For publishers that do opt to include DOIs, the DOIs are created when the journal launches on Project MUSE, not before. Project MUSE deposits article-level DOIs with CrossRef. DOIs do not appear in the citations Project MUSE provides for journal articles because at this time the DOI is not required by the citation structures Project MUSE offers (MLA, APA, Chicago).

Project MUSE does not currently provide DOIs for any of the Project MUSE books. Project MUSE anticipates doing so in the future.

No, there are no access restrictions on the Project MUSE search engine. It is therefore freely available to search to anyone with or without a subscription. The only area of the Project MUSE site that requires a subscription is viewing the full-text of articles. No id and password is needed, therefore, to set up federated searching. Project MUSE also supports any product compliant with the Z39.50 protocol for Information Retrieval.

A referring URL is sent in the header of an HTTP request. When referring URL is used as a method of authentication, authenticated users connect from a referring page, to which only they have access, to a licensed resource. The provider of the licensed resource recognizes the referring URL from the HTTP request and allows the user access to the resource.

Many subscribers have successfully implemented the protocol by using a configuration similar to the following:

T Project MUSE
U https://muse.jhu.edu
DJ muse.jhu.edu

If you are having problems configuring EZproxy, we suggest using the support materials from the Useful Utilities (https://help.oclc.org/Library_Management/EZproxy) web site.

Yes. The Z39.50 protocol for Information Retrieval provides another way for users to search and locate articles in Project MUSE using a Z39.50 compatible client. An institution must maintain a Project MUSE subscription in order to access the full text articles.

An ID and password are not required to set up the connection to the Project MUSE Z39.50 gateway. The following configuration details will allow for the connection:

Host: z3950.muse.jhu.edu or z3950.muse.uq.edu.au
Port: 210
Database: MUSE
Functions: Init, Search, Present, Fetch, Scan
Record Formats: USMARC, SUTRS
Search Attributes:
any - 1016
author - 1003
year - 31
title - 4
issn - 8
subject - 21
The 1016 search attribute includes the article full text.

Project MUSE offers the following functionalities:

Boolean operators (and/or/not)
Phrasing
Right truncation ("wildcarding")

The Z39.50 searches are not limited to the collection subscribed to by the institution; searches will search the entire Project MUSE database. Access to the full text articles will be based on the Project MUSE subscription maintained by the institution. Please use our online form to Request Technical Help. We welcome your questions and comments.

Yes, a library may set up a WAYFless URL to access Project MUSE. A WAYFless URL is a link that can be used by a subscribing institution to go directly to Project MUSE while at the same time identifying the subscribing institution to Project MUSE. It simplifies access to Project MUSE for library users.

An institution needs to link to https://muse.jhu.edu/wayf passing their EntityID as the variable named "eid" in the query string.

You do not have to authenticate through a proxy server in order to subscribe to the RSS feeds. To subscribe to the Project MUSE feeds, simply copy and paste the URL for the feed into your RSS aggregator and subscribe.

However, to view the full text articles from the links in the Table of Contents displayed in the Project MUSE RSS feed, you will have to authenticate via the proxy server. Subscribers using a proxy server have been successful accessing the full text by doing the following:

1. Subscribe to the feed
2. Log into the institution's proxy server
3. Find out the domain name of the institution's proxy server (i.e. http://proxy.xxx.edu)
4. Copy and paste the Project MUSE URL linked to from the Project MUSE feed (beginning with '/journal/...') to the end of the proxy server address.
5. Copy and paste this new URL into the location bar of the web browser and press Enter. Example: if trying to access the full text in https://muse.jhu.edu/article/635363, then the new copied and pasted URL would be: http://proxy.xxx.edu/article/635363

Yes. The OAI protocol is another way for institutions to facilitate access to articles in Project MUSE. An institution may request metadata from Project MUSE using an OAI command. Project MUSE will respond to the request by generating and serving XML documents. Based on the type of command sent from an institution, Project MUSE will supply data such as version of OAI supported (2.0), metadata formats supported (Dublin Core), listing of all journals in Project MUSE, and articles pertinent to the request.

The OAI base URL for Project MUSE is: https://muse.jhu.edu/oai.

As OAI in Project MUSE is still in beta, we welcome your comments and questions. Please use our online form to Request Technical Help.

Custom Print is a service provided by Sheridan Press that allows a user to click on a link from Project MUSE and purchase an article or groups of articles for the purpose of creating a custom publication. The user may choose either print or electronic format for the purchased articles.

Articles contained in The American Indian Quarterly published by the University of Nebraska Press are currently the only articles in Project MUSE to which this option is available. On the article page, look for the link 'Custom Print' to initiate the transaction. Clicking on the 'Custom Print' link takes the user to the web site of Sheridan Press where options for printing the selected articles are available.

Yes, Project MUSE offers a search plugin that allows you to search Project MUSE directly from your browser. The Project MUSE search plugin adds Project MUSE to the list of search engines available in the search box in the upper right corner of your browser. The Project MUSE search plugin can be added to any browser that supports Sherlock and OpenSearch Search Engine Plugins. When using the search plugin, the search results will default to searching the entire Project MUSE collection of journals. To read about and install the search plugin, go to the Project MUSE Search Plugin page.