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About Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law

Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law (MPEPIL) brings together articles on public international law.

How to subscribe

Logging in

To log into Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law type your username and password, or library card details into the form. If your institution subscribes to Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law and has registered the IP addresses of the computers on your institution's network, you will not need to enter a username and password and you will be taken straight to the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law subscription service.

Articles

Finding an article

To find an article published in Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, you can view any one of these lists:

• List Articles Alphabetically
• List Articles by Subject
• List Articles by Author

Select one of the options on the navigation menu to view that list.

List Articles Alphabetically

Articles are presented in alphabetical order, with a list for each letter. Use the Previous and Next or page number links to move through the list of articles within a letter. Select any letter to view a list of articles beginning with that letter.

List Articles by Subject

Click on a subject to view a list of articles pertaining to that particular subject. Click on the 'Back to List Articles by Subject' link to return to the subject list.

List Articles by Author

Authors are presented in alphabetical order, with a list for each letter. Select any letter to view a list of articles by authors beginning with that letter.

Navigating articles

To quickly jump to the sections of an article, click on the links in Table of Contents in the left-hand panel.

To return to the top of the article at any time, click on the page top link.

Printing articles

In the printing toolbar, click the print button. This will open a new window or tab (depending on your browser settings) displaying a PDF of the article which can be printed or saved.

Searching

The site features several ways to search its content, from the Quick Search box to the Advanced Search form. The Quick Search box is at the top right of every page of the site. You can access the Advanced Search form via the Advanced Search link under the Quick Search box.

General rules

The following rules apply to all of the searches on the site.

Different word forms

Search will sometimes expand your search term to look for alternate forms of the word. For example, a search for 'agree' will also return results for 'agree', 'agreed', and 'agreeing'. If you want a specific word form (i.e. 'agree' but not 'agreed'), use double quotes: "agree".

Search will find the alternate form of a word where there is different spelling in British and American English. For example, a search for 'most favoured nation' will find both 'most favoured nation' and 'most favored nation'.

Combining words (Boolean operators)

Search supports the boolean operators AND, OR and NOT.

Unless you tell it otherwise, Search assumes that you only want results in which ALL of your search terms appear. This means that there is an implicit 'AND' between all your search terms. So entering:

conciliation arbitration proceedings

will return the same results as if you had entered:

conciliation AND arbitration AND proceedings

You can use the OR operator to tell Search to return results in which either search term exists. For instance, if you enter:

zaire OR congo

your results will include any article in which either 'Zaire' or 'Congo' exist.

The NOT operator excludes documents that contain the term after NOT. For example,

congo NOT "democratic republic"

will return all results for 'Congo' which do not include the phrase 'democratic republic'.

Wildcards

You can use the * and ? wildcards when searching. The question mark or ? character represents any single character.

he?d

will return results for 'head' and 'heed'.

The asterisk or * character represents any number of characters. Entering

he*d

will return results for 'head' and 'heed', as well as 'helped', 'heard', 'headquartered', etc.

Case sensitivity and punctuation

Search terms entered in all in lower case will return results in both upper and lower cases. A search for

methanex

will return results that match 'methanex', 'Methanex', and 'METHANEX'. If you use capitals, however, Search will look for the format you entered:

Methanex

will only return results for 'Methanex' not 'methanex' or 'METHANEX'. Similarly, a search for

METHANEX

will only return results for 'METHANEX' not 'methanex' or 'Methanex'.

The search is only on characters; it does not search for punctuation. To search using initials, put a space between each initial:

w e b du bois will return results for 'W.E.B. Du Bois'.

Accented characters

If you are searching on word which includes an accented character you can enter the search terms with or without the accented character. For example a search for 'travaux preparatoires' will find 'travaux préparatoires' and 'travaux preparatoires'.

Note: Searching with the accented form will find only that form and not the form without the accent, so a search on 'travaux préparatoires' will find only 'travaux préparatoires' and not 'travaux preparatoires' (without an é).

Other special characters

There are a small number of characters which do not have an equivalent character on a standard US/UK English keyboard. To search on these characters, you will need to enter them into the search form. These include:

Œ œ
Þ þ
Æ æ
Ø ø
Ł ł
Ð ð
ß

If these characters are on your keyboard, you can enter them directly into a search form. If they are not, Windows users can use the Character Map to add them to the search form. In Windows XP to open the Character Map click Start, point to Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Character Map. You can copy and paste the characters you need from Character Map into the search form.

Words omitted from search (stop words)

By default, Search ignores certain common words in English. A search for

the uncitral arbitration

will look for any use of the words 'UNCITRAL' and 'arbitration'. To look for words that might be ignored by Search, use double quotes:

"the uncitral arbitration"

The stop words we use on the site are: a, an, and, are, as, at, be, but, by, for, if, in, into, is, it, no, not, of, on, or, such, that, the, their, then, there, these, they, this, to, was, will, with.

Quick search

To search Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, simply type one or more words into the Quick Search box and click the Search button.

Advanced search

The Advanced search form allows you to search by:

• Title/Heading
• Author
• Full Text
• Bibliography
• Select Documents
• Subject

You may use any of the features on the Advanced search form alone or in combination.

Title/Heading

To search for articles with a particular title or heading, enter the title or heading in the box on the Advanced Search form.

Author

To search for articles by a particular author, enter the name in the Author box.

Full Text

To search for articles containing a particular search term, enter any search term in the Full Text box.

Bibliography

To search for articles containing a particular source within Select Bibliographies, enter the source name in the Bibliography box.

Select Documents

To search for articles containing a document listed under Select Documents, enter the document name in the Select Documents box.

Subject

To search for articles within a particular subject, select the subject from the drop-down list.

Modifying a search

The words you entered in your previous search will remain in the Advanced search form during the current session, making it easy to return to your search and modify it. A session runs from when you log in to the time you log out. Once you log out, your terms from your previous search will not remain in the search box.

Resetting the Advanced search form

To remove all the words you entered in your previous search, click the 'clear form' button at the top right of the Advanced search form.

Search results

A Quick search or Advanced search will take you to the Search Results page.

The Search Results page lists the articles where your search term is found.

Where a search term returns a large number of results the list will be split into pages showing 10 results (the default option) at a time. You can choose to display 10, 25, 50, 75, or 100 results per page, and you can move through the results pages by using the previous and next links and page number links.

When you click on a search result, you will be taken to an article which contains your search terms. The search terms will be highlighted.

You can move through the search terms in a document by using the Prev Hit, Top, and Next Hit links in the Search Term Hits box that appears at the bottom right of each document displayed from a results list. This box remains in the same place as you scroll up and down the page.

Navigating search results

You can move through the search results by clicking on the Next result and Previous result links on the left of the page. Or you can return to the search results list by clicking on Results List.

Search results ordering

Search results are displayed in order of relevance, the most relevant results being those where your search terms are found the most times. A weighting is also given to results where your search terms occur in the headnote as opposed to the judgment text.

If you have entered more than one word in your search, the results where both your search terms are found will appear higher in the list than those where only one of your search terms is found.

Links to the Oxford Law Citator

Oxford Law Citator manages links in MPEPIL content online

Links between MPEPIL articles, and from MPEPIL articles to other referenced sources, are managed by the Oxford Law Citator.

In any given MPEPIL article, in order to see a list of other MPEPIL articles referred to, click on the Citator symbol:

or click on the Citator Record link in the table of contents for the article (this can be found in the article view, at the top of the article, to the left-hand side of the screen).

The aim of the Oxford Law Citator record for each article is to allow you to:

• access the MPEPIL article if it is available on the MPEPIL site;
• continue your research by following links to other records in the Citator for cross-referenced MPEPIL articles;
• follow links which map relationships between MPEPIL articles, judicial decisions, instruments and scholarly commentary; and
• access materials available in other OUP subscriber services.

Please note that Oxford Law Citator records are created by Oxford University Press, as part of its ongoing Citator project, rather than by Max Planck EPIL authors.

Initial publication and post-publication enhancement

Each MPEPIL article is published initially with a basic Citator record. All articles then go through a process of post-publication enhancement, and once that process is completed, each MPEPIL Citator record will contain lists of (and links to) Citator records for:

• all cross-referenced MPEPIL articles in that article; and
• all referenced judicial decisions, treaties, and scholarly material (books, journal articles, etc).

Activation of links within the article

Once post-publication enhancement is completed, hypertext links within the article will be activated. When a user hovers over an activated link, the link will appear in a different colour and underlined. Activated links within MPEPIL articles will again route via the Citator, where each referenced item will also have its own Citator record.

The population of the Citator is an ongoing project, which is being undertaken by Oxford University Press alongside the development of its online services. The aim is to provide users with a powerful tool which allows researchers to follow, and explore the relevance of, references in and between different types of legal content and commentary.

OpenURL

OpenURL links allow you to check whether a book or journal cited in Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law is referenced in your library's holdings. To enable this, your library will need to have an OpenURL resolver. Click on the link, which will appear as an icon to the left of a bibliographic reference, as shown in the illustration below, and a query will be sent to your library's OpenURL resolver: the results will show in a new window.

The OpenURL resolver will be set up by your library administrator to search for the resource in your library's holdings. For a book or a journal, you may have the option to send a query to your library's online catalogue. Also for online journals, you may have the option to check whether the abstract and/or full text of the article is available to you via your library's subscription.

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