There are two ways to get alerts from Web of Science: through the Current Contents Connect database and when a specific article or author is cited.
The Current Contents Connect (CCC) database contains tables of contents (with abstracts and citation links) for journals in all disciplines. You can sign up for alerts based on a journal title, a keyword search, an author name, or an author affiliation.
Look below for instructions for subscribing to CCC alerts and for subscripting to article or author citation alerts.
Web of Science alerts versus alerts from a publisher
Many publishers will also allow you to subscribe to alerts for a specific journal's table of contents. Using Web of Science instead gives you a central portal for managing your table of contents alerts and lowers the number of online accounts you need to maintain. However, although CCC is updated on a daily basis, email alerts from Web of Science may arrive a day or two later than alerts coming directly from a publisher.
If you receive your Web of Science alerting email when you are on a computer that's off campus, you need to take an extra step to make the links work.
Step 1: Click the link to the article.
Step 2: The system will recognize that you are off campus, and will provide several options. Select the Registered Users option: Registered Users - If you have previously registered with Web of Knowledge, then you may be able to access it now by signing in with your Web of Knowledge username and password.
Step 3: Sign in using the username and password you used to sign up for the alerts. As long as your browser remembers that you are logged in, you should be able to access multiple articles from that alerting email, or search Web of Science as if you were on campus.
Current Contents Connect is a database within the Web of Science family. It offers access to the tables of contents (with abstracts and citation links) for journals in all disciplines. CCC is updated on a daily basis.
Sign up for alerts based on journal title, a keyword search, or an author name or author affilation ("Address" field). You will receive an email with links to new content matching your search at your desired frequency (daily, weekly, or monthly).
To sign up for alerts, you must create an account on Web of Knowledge. This will allow you to save searches, set up alerts, and more.
Step 1: Sign in to Web of Knowledge from link above. In the Select a Database section at the top of the page, choose Current Contents Connect from the drop-down menu.
Step 2: Run your search, making any modifications you wish to your search terms and refining your results set.
Step 3: Click Create Alert on the left side of the screen, beneath the total number of search results.
Step 4: A box will pop up. Name the search (the Name box has a 20-character limit) and set your preferences for the format and frequency of the alert. Make sure the Email alerts box is checked, indicating that you want to receive emails!
Step 5: Click the blue Save button at the bottom of the alert preferences. You do not need to click the Download button to save your search history to a local drive. Your alerts will begin to arrive shortly.
You may wish to be alerted when a specific article (or author) is cited.
Step 1: Sign in to Web of Science. Click Cited Reference Search, located above the search bar.
Step 2: Fill in the form with the author's name plus the year and the journal title; do not specify page or volume numbers, as the citing articles sometimes make mistakes with those items.
Step 3: Click Search to run a search for the specified article.
Step 4: Select the desired article version, if necessary, then click Finish Search.
Step 5: Click Create Alert on the left side of the screen. Fill in the pop-up box with an alert name, your email address and your alert preferences.
Step 6: Save the alert. Your alerts will begin to arrive shortly.