Learning objectives

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

What is an alert service?

Many journal databases and book publishers offer free alert services. These are an effective means of keeping track of the latest research.

Alert services come in different forms. The first is a search alert. This is a saved search which alerts you when a book or article that matches your search terms is published. The second is a Table of Contents (TOC) alert, which provides the table of contents of a newly published issue of a particular journal. The last is a citation alert. Citation alerts let you know when a particular article is cited by a new article.

Most alert services are email-based. An increasing number are now offered as an RSS feed. You might like to try email alerts first. These are generally easier to create.

How to set up alerts

To create an alert, you generally need to register with each journal index. Below is a list of some of the main journal databases that offer alert services.

• American Mathematical Society.
• BioMed Central.
• BioOne.
• CSIRO Journals.
• Duke University Journals.
• Emerald.
• HighWire.
• IngentaConnect.
• Institute of Physics.
• Nature Publishing Group.
• PNAS.
• PubMed.
• Royal Society of Chemistry.
• Sage.
• ScienceDirect.
• SpringerLink.
• Web of Science.
• Wiley.

Book publishers

Many publishers and book distributers now offer alert service to readers. These can be a useful means of tracking non-journal research.

• Wiley-Blackwell.
• Brill.
• Cambridge University Press.
• DA Book Alerts.
• Jossey-Bass.
• Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins.
• MIT Press.
• Prentice Hall.
• University of Chicago Press.
• Springer.

Web Feeds

Many academic publishers now send out alerts via RSS or Web feeds. RSS is a popular alternative to email alerts. To get started you need a RSS reader, feed reader, or feed aggregator which will check RSS-enabled sites and download the latest content.

Although specialised RSS aggregators exist, many popular email (eg Outlook) and browser packages (Explorer/Firefox) can be used as feed readers.

To sign up to your favourite journal, check the journal site for one of the common RSS icons. Examples are below:

Clicking on such button will subscribe you to the associated feed or display the feed address.

Summary

This module dealt with the following:

• the different sorts of alert services.
• the range of alerts available from academic publishers.
• RSS alert feeds.