Keeping up to date with current research - setting up alerts
To receive details of the latest articles and conference proceedings, you can set up e-mail alerts or RSS alerts. This normally requires you to register your details with a particular publisher or database. Information about different types of alerts, and how to set them up, is provided below. If you would like any help setting up an alert, please contact your Subject Librarian.
You can also keep up to date with current research by identifying which authors, publications and institutions have emerged recently within your topic area - within journals published by Springer and BioMed Central.
You can also keep up to date with current research by identifying which authors, publications and institutions have emerged recently within your topic area - within journals published by Springer and BioMed Central.
Alerts for the tables of contents of your favourite journals
The quickest and most reliable way to get tables of contents alerts is to visit to the Journal homepage on the publisher's website. Most journals provide alerts in either e-mail or RSS format. However, if you want to set up tables of contents alerts for a long list of journals, these services are recommended:
Alerts for a topic or author
- Web of Science (WOS), a sub-set of Web of Knowledge: this covers high impact journals and conference papers in a wide range of subject areas. Alerts may arrive several weeks after the article has been published. WOS appears as a tab within Web of Knowledge.
To set up WOS alerts: you need to be registered with Web of Knowledge (you can register via sign in at the top of the screen). Once registered, undertake an topic or author search within WOS, and then click on the Search History tab. Finally, click on Save Search before selecting/saving your alert options.
In addition to creating an alert within WOS, 'save search' enables you re-run the same search at a later date/session without having to re-enter your keywords. To do this, click on the Search History tab, and then Open Saved History (follow the instructions on the screen from there). It is not possible to set up alerts for content from the other Web of Knowledge databases (WOK). However, you can save and re-run searches across the whole of WOK.
- Other databases: Most of the library databases in specific subject areas will have an alerting feature. If you require any more information about this, you might like to refer to the relevant database guide, if available. Databases also include help sections.
Citation alerts (using Web of Knowledge)
- Web of Knowledge enables you to set up an alert to notify you when a particular article has been cited. You might be interested in using this to find out when someone has cited an article or conference paper that you have written.
Chemical structure/subsctructure alerts
- SciFinder (for research staff and postgraduates only). You can set up alerts to notify you when a journal article or patent contains a particular chemical structure or substructure.
Identify emerging authors, publications & institutions in your topic area
- Search AuthorMapper to identify emerging institutions, authors, publishers, publications and countries in a given topic field. You can also track the development of a topic over a period of time. Please be aware that the results of an AuthorMapper search are purely quantitative and are only based on content published by Springer & BioMed Central.