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New Journal and Book Alerts (Notifications)

Tips for using emailed alerts, table of contents services, and RSS feeds to keep up with what's being written in a discipline.

Library Contact

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Karen A. Reiman-Sendi
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Contact:
The University of Michigan
2178 Shapiro Library
919 S. University Avenue
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1185
Website

Overview

Alerts and notifcations are forms of information that are pushed to you, based on your academic or scholarly interests, typically to your email inbox or social media news feeds. Alerts can be related to journal content, article database searches, new blog entries, and websites. A "subscription" or personal account is required to receive most alerting services.

Choosing the Best Source for Your Alerts

If you want... Sign up for this kind of alert
Journal tables of contents as soon as they come out
  • Alerts from the publisher's website for that journal.  
  • Current Contents Connect (updated on a daily basis but will still lag behind the "online first" publication of some journal websites)
  • Journal TOCs (based in the UK) provides a free, searchable collection of the "latest or most current papers published in the scholarly literature with international coverage."

New citations on selected topics

To be alerted when a specific item is cited
To be alerted when a specific author is cited
  • Scopus for an author citation alert