Research Guides: Scholarly Publishing Guide: Keeping up with research

Staying current

With more than 5,000 journal publishers, 50,000+ journals and 2.5 million articles published every year, it's easy to miss important information. The following services can help you keep on top of published research in your field.

Email alert services

Most Brock databases offer e-mail alert services that allow you to keep up-to-date when new research in your discipline is published.

Google Scholar Alerts
Google Scholar Alerts will track when new publications by either yourself or other authors are added to Google Scholar. Sign into your Google account, go to Google Scholar and select Alerts on the top navigation menu.
Web of Science
Create an account and use "My Tools" to save searches and create citation and journal alerts.
EBSCO/SuperSearch
Create an account in an EBSCO database, e.g. SuperSearch, CINAHL, etc. to save your searches and create alerts.
ProQuest databases
Create a "My Research" account to save searches and create search alerts and publication alerts.
SciFinder Keep Me Posted
Register for a SciFinder Account to create "Keep Me Posted" alerts for references and substances.
OVID MEDLINE alerts
Create a My Workspace account to set up save searches, set up search alerts, and subscribe to eTOCs (Table of Content alerts)

Table of Contents alerts

Most electronic journals offer notifications which alert you when new issues are published: usually this is referred to as journal TOCs - Table of Contents - alerts. Go to the website of the journal to sign up an account: look for information on alerts on either the top or bottom navigation menu.

Another option is JournalTOCs, a free collection of journal tables of contents for almost 30,000 journals, from more than 2700 publishers. This is a free service provided by Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.

JournalTOCs

Blogs, social media & other non-traditional sources

Blogs, news reports, lab notebooks and other informal channels are increasingly used to discuss and disseminate research. Researchers are also using social media, particularly Twitter, to share and comment on scholarship. These platforms promote timely and interactive discussions and collaboration.

Suggestions for staying current with these venues:

Find a blog, publication, website or open lab notebook and sign up for an RSS feed, which will notify you of new content. You can either have the feeds sent to your email account or use a news aggregator to gather all your incoming feeds in one place.
Interested in tracking what's being done by specific researchers? Find and follow them on Facebook, Twitter -- or academic social networking sites such as ResearchGate -- to keep up with their work.
Google Alerts: Set up a search alert and Google will email you when new results for your topic - or name - show up in Google Search.