Keeping up-to-date with developments in your field

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Keeping up-to-date

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Introduction

It is vital for researchers and academics, whatever their discipline, to keep up-to-date with the most recently published information.  Being aware of what other researchers in your field are working on, or have worked on, is essential.  Currency and keeping up-to-date is especially important in the science disciplines.  There are a variety of ways of tracking publishing output and keeping yourself informed of new and important developments in your field.  A selection of current awareness services is outlined below.

Journals and databases

Many journals and databases have services that help you to stay up-to-date in your field, or alert you to new publications of interest.  Most alert services are offered as RSS Feeds or as emails and may include:

Table of Contents Alerts

A Table of Contents (TOC) service sends you the table of contents each time a new issue of a journal is published.  Links to full-text articles may be provided if an electronic subscription exits.  The following is a selection of publishing houses providing free TOC services - all of these can be accessed by the Library's catalogue or via SuperSearch:

It should be remembered, however, that coverage is limited to that publishing house or individual journal, and often only very basic keyword indexing is provided in addition to the browsing of contents pages.  More systematic and non-publisher specific coverage should be sought from indexing databases.

Search Alerts

A search alert notifies you of new articles that match a search you have saved.  This can alert you to new articles in a given subject area, by a certain author, or containing specific keywords.  Examples of databases that offer search alerts include:

  • Web of Knowledge - you can save your search history as an alert.  The alert automatically searches the latest update to the database and sends the results of the saved search to you by email when there are new records.
  • CSA Illumina - you need to create an account to search the Alerts option from the Create Alert page.  You can save any search executed during a session as an Alert.
  • Ebscohost - you can create an Alert directly from the Result List, Search History, or the Publication List.  You can also create instant RSS feed Alerts by clicking on the orange RSS Feed icons.
  • Ovid databases - you can save your search history as an alert with the option Save Search ... as an Auto Alert Search.  Fill in the General Parameters and you will receive a Confirmation Message.

Citation Alerts

A citation alert notifies you when new publications cite a particular work.  Sometimes a personal login will be required, either before setting up an alert or as part of the process (this is in addition to accessing the database with your UWA login).  Remember to keep details of any user names or passwords.

For example, Web of Knowledge databases allow you to receive an email alert when articles you select are cited.  Alternatively, you can use this feature to keep a list of your favorite articles.  To add an article to this list (and receive an email each time it is cited):

  1. Perform a search in one of the ISI Web of Knowledge citation database productions (such as Web of Science).
  2. When viewing a Full Record, click the Create Citation Alert button

(Note: not all Full Records in all Web of Knowledge databases will have this button - read the database Help pages for more information).

Personalised Alerts

The Library also subscribes to ScienceDirect which provides the full-text of over 1800 journals from the Elsevier Science publishing house.  This service provides the facility to save subject alerts, or to track new issues of your personal selection of journals.  To access these services, choose the Register Path and follow the steps to create a free personal profile.  Further information and help is available from the database information and help pages or publisher web sites.

Managing Alerts

There is a risk of duplication if one subscribes to several alerting services.  One way of handling this is to maintain personal bibliographies using software such as EndNote.  Duplicates can be screened out as selected citations are imported.  Many publishers' sites offer direct importing of citations to such products.

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Books

UWA

To keep up-to-date with new books purchased by the UWA Library you can browse the weekly new book displays in each subject library or view new book lists on the Library Web site organised by subject.  You can choose to receive a weekly list of the new titles by email.  More information on subscribing to a new book email list can be found on the Library Web site.

Publishers and Booksellers

You can browse newly published books on the web pages of many publishers and online booksellers.  Email alerting services in specified subject areas can help keep you up-to-date.  Some of these include:

  • Blackwell's Collection Manager (http://cm.blackwell.com) - a supplier and publisher of US and UK academic titles.  For assistance in creating your own email alerts contact a Librarian in your subject library.
  • DA Direct Access (http://dadirect.com.au/) - a supplier of US, UK, European, and Australasian publications.  Register to create and receive email alerts.
  • Amazon (http://amazon.com) - offers alerts for books and other formats.

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Conferences

Attending conferences is a popular way of staying current and for networking with colleagues in the same research field.  Locating papers delivered at conferences can sometimes be difficult, but they can often be the only record of vital new research results.  Some useful conference listings include:

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Blogs and Discussion Lists

Blogs and discussion lists provide a forum of contact with researchers around the world.  By subscribing you can find out about the latest developments in a particular field months or even years before such information is otherwise made available.  Some examples of blogs include:

Some examples of discussion lists include:

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RSS Feeds

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is an XML-based format that scans a site for updates to the content, and then delivers the updated content to subscribers in the form of a list of headlines.  Each headline contains a description and link to the related web page.  More information about RSS feeds can be found on the Library Web site.

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Subject Library Newsletters

Librarians in UWA subject libraries write regular newsletters.  This is a convenient way of keeping up-to-date with selected resources in your subject area, including new websites, free database trials, new online resources, training courses, and news about developments in library service.  You can subscribe to newsletters from the Library Web site.

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Web Pages

Stay up-to-date with what is being published on the web in your subject area.  There are a number of services that provide alerting services for what is published on the web.  Some of these services include:

  • GoogleAlert (http://www.googlealert.com/) - a search engine results tracking service, unaffiliated with Google, that watches for new content across the web by monitoring web pages indexed by Google.
  • The Scout Report (http://scout.wisc.edu/Reports/ScoutReport/) - weekly reports offering a selection of new and newly discovered web resources of interest to researchers and educators.

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