Email Alerts for Journal Articles

Many databases offer email alerts for newly published journal articles, book chapters, and conference papers. They allow you to establish a personal profile that incorporates your email address, and search strategies that include author and journal title searches.

The list of CQUniversity databases with this service provides links to help pages on establishing email alerts for the specific database.

There are two main types of current awareness services for keeping up-to-date with published journal articles. These involve establishing a personal profile to receive one or both of the following:

• TOC (Table of Contents) service sends you an alert containing the "Table Of Contents" of the most recent issue of a particular journal. Publishers often provide a free table of content alert (with the full text provided for a fee).
  
  
• SDIs (Selective Dissemination of Information) are programs, used by various database providers, to run a "saved search" on recent additions to the database. You create the saved search yourself, and it may contain author, subject, or key words. The SDIs are run on a regular, e.g. weekly or monthly, basis. The results are usually forwarded to you in email format. This service has different names in different databases (IngentaConnect uses "search alerts", Emerald uses "saved search alert", whereas Ovid uses the name "autoalert").

Some services offer both TOC and SDI alerts (e.g. IngentaConnect, ProQuest or Emerald).