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Library Research Guides

Keeping Alert - Tracking New Articles and Books in your field

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

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Karen A. Reiman-Sendi
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The University of Michigan
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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)

 New citations on selected topics
  • Alerts from your favorite disciplinary database
  • Use the guide menu (to the left) for directions on how to set up alerts from disciplinary databases on the ProQuest and EBSCO platforms, Web of Science, and Google Scholar
To be alerted when a specific item is cited

 

Most alerts will be available as in email format; some will also provide an RSS feed option. Experiment with any combination of these and decide which works best for you.