Rechecks

At the beginning of the licence year, all the items in the DCS will be re-checked against the Check Permissions API. When items become excluded, HEIs are permitted to use them for the remainder of the academic year, but they are flagged in the dashboard for future planning, and must be addressed before the following academic year. This article will take you through what happens during the re-checking of permissions and what you need to do to ensure you are prepared for this.

Quick links within article

When will re-checking take place?

How long will re-checking take?

What do I need to do for re-checking?

Optional self-checking

Action to take once system checks are complete

1) Items that have become excluded from the CLA licence

2) Items with 'Licence status unknown'

3) Titles with no ISN

Queries

FAQs

When will re-checking take place? 

CLA will run the re-checking of Licence permissions at the beginning of August, to comply with the Licence terms.

In DCS 2.0, HEIs have the option to run a bulk recheck themselves if they would like to do this ahead of the August deadline. This is entirely optional and CLA will always run a bulk check on (or shortly after) the 1st August as normal.

Please note that only active requests will be rechecked; archived and deleted requests will not be rechecked. We cannot recheck anything that does not have an identifier (ISBN or ISN), these will need to be manually rechecked. To do this, see this article. 

How long will re-checking take? 

Re-checking will be dependent upon the number of content items you have uploaded into the DCS. The higher the number, the longer this will take. We are estimating it will take anywhere between 5 minutes for an institution with a low number of links, and up to 2 hours for those with a high number of links.

What do I need to do for re-checking? 

Optional self-checking

If you want to check the permissions yourself ahead of the CLA all-HEI check, follow these steps:

1. Log in to your DCS account
2. Go to Check All Permissions in the left hand menu
3. Select the Start Check button

4. You will be prompted as to whether or not you want to go ahead. You can either select "Cancel" or "Yes, start".

   The check will run in the background so you can leave this page and continue doing other things. You will receive an email once the check is complete.

   

If you do not want to check the permissions yourself
You do not need to do anything prior to the rechecks process. However, once we have run the re-check of permissions on your institution’s content, you will need to double check that no additional items have become excluded since your own check.

Action to take once system checks are complete

1) Items that have become excluded from the CLA licence

You will need to check for any content that has been excluded from the Licence and either clear this through alternative permissions or delete it from the DCS. If content has become excluded from the Licence, the link will break in the DCS, and the content will go back to a ‘Pending licence’ status. These will be flagged to you on the dashboard in the Licence section, as ‘CLA licence excluded’ (see screenshot below). You should keep an eye on this section during the first week of August to catch any content items that become unavailable due to being out of licence at this time.

If you believe the exclusion to be in error, please email [e-mail]. 

2) Items with 'Licence status unknown'

You will also need to review Licence Status Unknown titles under the link on the Dashboard (see screenshot below). These will be:

• titles that were not found in the Check Permissions database and have never had an override applied
• titles that were overridden very near to rechecks (see last FAQ below), which need to be overridden again.

3) Titles with no ISN

Without a reference number (ISBN or ISSN), we are unable to run the search in Check Permissions. However, it's still important to check for anything that has become excluded over the past year. To do this, you will need to identify any publishers whose content with no ISNs you have used, and ensure they are not on the 'excluded' lists.

Our recommended process for this is outlined here.

Queries

Queries for not found and excluded titles should be sent to [e-mail] 

FAQs

Can students access content during re-checking? 

Yes, the links will remain active for students during and after this process. The only exception to this will be where content has become excluded from the Licence. In this circumstance the link will break, meaning students will not be able to access the content. This content will need to be re-assessed by your teams and will need clearing through other methods.

Can my team continue to work on the DCS during re-checking? 

Yes, work will not be affected by the re-checking process.

What about EHESS orders? 

It is fine to have pending orders during this process; they will be run through the process as well and should not disrupt it.

Will content that I’ve overridden to be ‘covered by the CLA Licence’ because it was either ‘Not Found’ by the CLA Check Permissions tool or ‘Excluded’, but which I’ve verified as included, be pulled up again and need re-assessing?  

This shouldn't be the case for most titles as CLA regularly checks the DCS for items that have been overridden to be covered by the CLA Licence when they were either ‘Not Found’ or ‘Excluded’. Our Data team then verifies this and updates the Check Permissions database. This means that if you’ve overridden it previously, as long as we can confirm it is indeed covered by the Licence, we will update our Check Permissions tool to ensure it is not flagged during the re-checking process. 

However please note that titles overridden in the month or so leading up to rechecking will need to be overridden again as we will not have had time to complete the internal review process for this batch. If you want to override items in July, you may wish to email [e-mail] and the Data team will add these to the system as quickly as they can and hopefully in time for re-checks. 

Practical note

Remember that selecting 'Covered by CLA Licence' does not generate the link. You need to scroll to the bottom of the page and click 'Generate Link' whereby the same link as before will be regenerated.