Beyond Google for your research: Alerts

Keeping up to date with alerts

What is an alert?

It is an automatic update of:

  • a new journal issue or
  • new literature on your topic

that has been added to a database or publisher's website.

Alerts can be set up as:

  • Email alerts - sent directly to your email inbox
  • RSS Feeds - stands for Really Simple Syndication

Why set up alerts?

  • to keep up to date with the latest research developments in your field
  • to identify new areas of possible research
  • to meet professional development requirements
  • to save you time

There are several ways to view these feeds:

  • RSS feed reader or aggregator
  • Web browser
  • Web based news readers

Types of alerts

Journal (Table of Contents) alert

- you receive journal Table of Contents in your email or alerts feed

Keyword/Subject/Topic alert

- allow you to save topic searches, and offer automatic updates whenever new literature on your topic is added. Some publishers' websites also allow this type of alert

Citation alert

- some databases allow you to track how many times a particular article is cited by other authors. For more information on citation alerts, refer to the Citation and Journal Metrics Guide

Author alert

- some databases offer author alerts. When you are researching in a particular field you may discover that certain authors publish regularly and you may wish to be alerted to any of their new articles

Databases with alerts

Most databases now offer an alerting service. Some databases and database platforms that include alerts are:

​To set up alerts, login to the database via the Library, then you can add details to start getting alerts.

Other search tools with alerting services

You may use other search tools offering alerting services relevant to your area of research.

Look for links to alerting or RSS Feed options, or check the database Help to see what alerting features are offered.