Alerting services are a great way to receive updates on topics, journals, researchers, and citations of interest to you. They also help you save time and keep on top of the research by automatically sending updates to you instead of you spending time searching for updates. Many alerts are set up and managed via individual specific databases or can be managed via an RSS feed.
Most of the databases will ask that you create a personalized account to manage your saved searches or RSS feeds.
There are many different types of alerts available:
- Journal Alerts: Stay on top of your favorite Journals by receiving the Table of Contents from the latest issues or by being notified of the latest articles published in an issue.
- Topic Alerts: Stay on top of your research areas of interest by having databases automatically run saved topic searches and have the latest search results sent to you.
- Citation Alerts: Be notified when an article gets cited. Very useful at keeping track of your own citation statistics and as well as the statistics within your field or department.
If you have a favorite Journal, you can set up Journal or Table of Contents Alerts or New publication Alerts to be notified of the latest articles published in said Journal. Check out the list of Top 5 Journals by Impact factor on the Find Articles tab for some suggestions of Journals to follow.
Journal TOCs: A free service that collects feeds from over 19,000 academic journals, and can provide you with new tables of contents whenever a new issue is published. Browse by subject area, journal title, or combine multiple journal titles into a single feed!
EBSCO Host Journal Alerts: Create an Ebsco account (top menu --> sign in). Conduct a search for your Journal name by entering in the name of the Journal and choosing (SO Publication Name) from the drop-down field menu. On your search results page, click on "Share" and select either 'E-mail Alert' or "RSS feed".
ProQuest Journal Alerts: Create a MyResearch Account (Top menu -->My Research). Click on 'Publications' (Top left of the screen). Conduct a search for your Journal. Click on 'Create alert' or 'Create RSS feed' and fill out the form.
PubMed: Create an NCBI account. In the Advanced search, enter the name of the journal and select the 'Journal' field from the drop down-field. Press Search. On the results page, click on RSS or 'Save Search' (below the search bar).
Science Direct: Login to Science Direct (top right). Conduct a search for the Journal by entering the name of the Journal in the Journal/Book title field. Select " New Article Feed" or "Alert me about New articles".
Web of Science Journal Alerts: Sign in to Web of Science (top right). Conduct a search for your Journal name by entering the name of the Journal and choosing Publication Name from the drop-down field menu. On your search results page click on "Create Alert/RSS Feed" (top left of the screen).
Instead of re-running the same search every few weeks or months, stay on top of the literature in your field by creating a saved search alert or RSS feed where your search will run automatically and you will be notified of the latest results. Saved searches can be simple searches with a few keywords or highly specific.
EBSCO Host saved search alerts: Create a ProQuest account (top menu --> sign in). Conduct a search for your topic. On your search results page, click on "Share" and select either 'E-mail Alert' or "RSS feed".
ProQuest saved search alerts: Create a MyResearch Account (Top menu -->My Research). Conduct a search for your topic. Click on 'Create alert' or 'Create RSS feed' and fill out the form.
PubMed: Create an NCBI account. Conduct a search for your topic. On the results page, click on RSS or 'Save Search' (below the search bar).
Science Direct saved search alerts: Login to Science Direct (top right). Conduct a search for your topic. Select "New Article Feed" or "Alert me about New articles".
Web of Science saved search alerts: Sign in to Web of Science (top right). Conduct a search for your topic. On your search results page click on "Create Alert/RSS Feed" (top left of the screen).
Be alerted when an article that you have published or an article of interested to you has been cited.
Web of Science: Sign in to Web of Science (top right). Conduct a search for the article name and then click on your article. On the right-hand side of the page you will see an option for 'Create Citation Alerts' click on that and complete the necessary information.
