Guide to keeping up to date with Research, created by Leeds Beckett University Library

1. The Library: Keeping up to
date with Research

2. What we will cover:
• What does keeping up to date mean?
• Alerting services:
– Discover and other databases
– Journal alerts (TOCs)
– Citation alerts
– Book alerts
– News alerts
• Networking tools

3. What does it mean?
• Instead of visiting websites to check for new
content, we can set up tools to periodically harvest
new information for us
• Alerts, news, updates and social networking can be
used to channel that information to one place
This session will help you to decide what tools you
might wish to use
To get started, all you need is an email address –
but you can also use bookmarking tools.

4. What is an alert?
“A service which a user can subscribe to which
delivers electronic news on a regular basis, or
whenever an event of interest to the user occurs.”
Ince, D. (2013) Alerting service. In: A dictionary of the internet, 3rd ed. [Online].
Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available from: <http://www.oxfordreference.com>
[Accessed 14 November 2017].

5. Alerting options
• New book: for new books
• Table of contents: for new issues of journals and
magazines
• Search/subject: whenever specified search/subject terms
appear
• Citation: whenever an item is added to a database citing a
specified article or author
• Specialised: New patents, standards, etc.
• Blogs, groups, etc: For new posts

6. At Leeds Beckett…
• The Library subscribes to information sources which
are not freely available online*
• New resources are added to the collection all the
time: new books, new editions, new journal articles,
news, updated statistics, etc.
• The challenge is to manage this flow of information
* Although you can now set up to access
Library resources on and off campus

7. Creating search alerts
If you create a profile in a database or search tool, you
can save your searches, enabling you to:
• Access them from any internet-connected device
• Easily re-run searches
• Be alerted by email to any updates matching your
search criteria
How to get started:
1) Choose an information service. For example,
Discover, Science Direct or PubMed
2) Look on the site for “alerts” and use your email
address to sign-up

8. Creating search alerts: Discover
We will use Discover as an example, but most databases
offer similar features and operate in a similar way:
• Create an EBSCOhost (EBSCO = Discover) account
to:
– save searches and create email alerts
or
– use the RSS option

9. Create search alerts:
Google Scholar also offers email alerts
• Run a search, then look for the Create alert icon to
send results to your email account.

10. External options
• You can also set up professional accounts to create
search alerts and aggregate information feeds
• Mainly free, but a growing number offer ‘premium’
options
• Popular examples include:
Tool Commonly used for
Academia.edu Sharing research and following other
academics
Wordpress Blogging and following blogs of
professionals & researchers
Diigo Bookmarking, organising and sharing
useful sites
Netvibes Following news, social media and
relevant sites

11. Journal Table of Contents (TOCs) alerts
• ZETOC
– British Library’s electronic table of contents
– One of the world’s most comprehensive research databases
– You can set up personalised email Zetoc Alerts or RSS feeds
to track the latest articles or journal titles related to your
interests
• Journal TOCs
– Free service (but registration required)
– Allows you to save your Table of Contents in your MyTOCs
account or export them to your feed reader

12. Citation alerts
You can also set up an email alert or RSS feed to find
out when someone cites research
• Scopus is our main tool for this at Leeds Beckett
– Use your university log-in to register and set up alerts with
the buttons to the right of an article you have open

13. Citation alerts in
• Find an article in Google Scholar. In the bottom left
of the article’s citation will be a Cited by field
• When viewing the articles which cite your original
search, you can then create an alert

14. Useful tools to identify new books published on your topic:
• Google Book Alerts
• ACQWEB Directory of Publishers: Directory which will
help you check individual publishers’ websites for new
book alerts. For example:
• Cambridge University Press
• Oxford University Press
• Springer
• Wiley Blackwell
Book alerts

15. News alerts
General news sources:
• PressReader
• Infotrac Newsstand
• LexisNexis (UK newspapers)
Professional / trade news sources:
• Economia
• Nursing Times
• Times Higher Education Supplement
Tip: Ask your Academic Librarian for subject-specific suggestions

16. RSS
• RSS (Rich Site Summary) readers are now less
common, as other tools are generally preferred
• Anywhere you see the RSS logo (top right) you will
usually now see other tools as well
• Popular tools which can be used on PC, Android
and Apple devices are Google+, Feedly, LinkedIn,
Pinterest, Flipboard
• Blogger can also be used to remember the
professional resources you use

17. Networking tools 1
Communicate with colleagues and other professionals
using, for example:
• JiscMail UK (and some international) academic email
discussion lists
• Leeds Beckett’s Institutional Repository: To expose
your research to a global audience
• Leeds Beckett Google account tools
• Academia.edu, a research sharing platform
• LinkedIn, a business-orientated social networking site
• A research blog on a platform like Blogger, Tumblr or
WordPress

18. Networking tools 2
• Referencing software: Some systems also allow you
to collect, organise, cite, sync and collaborate. For
example: EndNote Online, Mendeley, Zotero
• ResearcherID is a global, multi-disciplinary scholarly
research community, offering access to author’s
publication lists and citation metrics
All of these services can be powerful communities of
practice, linking people far and wide, and enabling
collaboration, support and even job opportunities
Tip: Further information on referencing software is available on the
Library website and also from your Academic Librarian

19. We have covered:
• What does keeping up to date mean?
• Alerting services:
– Discover and other databases
– Journal alerts (TOCs)
– Citation alerts
– Book alerts
– News alerts
• Networking tools