LibGuides: Keeping up-to-date: Home

BrowZine for browsing TOCs and alerts of new issues of journals

BrowZine draws together many of our e-journals in an attractive, easy to use interface. Download the app to create your own 'bookshelf' of journal titles and to be alerted to new issues - it's then easy to see new tables of contents. You can save articles to read at a more convenient time, or export the citation details to EndNote or another referencing system.

Publishers will often give the option of setting up alerts for new books in your field - try looking for 'email notifications' or look in the information for researchers.

Journal publishers may also provide a free alerting service. This may be email alerts of tables of contents (TOC) of new issues, or through a database of journal articles. In most cases you will need to register for a free account.

Alternatively, Journal TOCs provides peer-reviewed scholarly journal tables of contents free of charge. It covers more than 35,000 journals, including more than 17,000 selected Open Access journals and more than 12,000 hybrid journals.

Journal TOCs

Need more help?

If you need help setting up alerts or using databases:

Contact your Academic Liaison Librarian

Databases

Databases are organized collections of published journal articles, conference papers, government documents and other works, which can be searched in a systematic manner. Setting up email alerts based on your searches or on specific journal titles is the most efficient way to keep up to date with new publications in your area.

To use the alerting facilities on most databases you will need to create a personal account once logged in.

We subscribe to a range of databases: some cover all subject areas (such as Web of Science, Scopus), some cover particular types of publication (for instance, Index to theses), and some cover specific subject areas (for example, MLA Bibliography for English Literature). You will need to establish which are the most appropriate databases to search - see your subject guide for guidance.

Subject guides
Guides to specialist resources in subjects studied at the University.
Guide to searching databases

Keep up-to-date automatically

Once you have found a suitable search (or searches), you will need to repeat them regularly to pick up any new publications. You can set up email alerts to automate this process. See the other tabs in this box for details of how to do this on the most popular databases.

You can also set up citation alerts so that if a new paper appears which cites a key article you will be informed.

The Web of Science platform gives access to several databases including the Web of Science Core Collection (citation indexes covering all subjects and conference proceedings), Medline (biomedical sciences) and BIOSIS Previews (biological abstracts). You can search one or all of these databases and save your searches to re-run against the latest updates to the databases. You can also set up citation alerts (so that you are notified when someone cites your key articles). There's also a current awareness service in the Web of Science called Current Contents Connect.

Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Use to search across a number of databases covering a range of subject areas. Provides references to journal articles, books, conference papers, patents, research data and other materials.
Web of Science gives access to a range of databases which can be searched individually or simultaneously:

-BIOSIS Previews - biological sciences
-Current Contents Connect
-Data Citation Index - research data from international repositories
-Derwent Innovations Index - patents in engineering
-FSTA (Food Science and Technology Abstracts)
-Medline - biomedical sciences
-Web of Science Core Collection - made up of the Arts and Humanities, Science, and Social Sciences Citation Indexes, plus a number of other databases

The cross-search also includes open access journals and open archive repositories.

Also available via Web of Science:

-JCR (Journal Citation Reports)

Help and guidance
Web of Science Training Portal
Current Contents Connect This link opens in a new window
Current Contents Connect is a multidisciplinary current awareness service providing access to complete bibliographic information of the world's leading scholarly journals.
It also allows you to search a collection of evaluated scholarly websites and access evaluated, full-text documents in three general resource types: preprints, funding information, and research activities.

Covers 2008-

Help and guidance
Help and training materials on using Current Contents Connect

Setting up an alert

Saving your search & setting email alerts

Scopus is a large bibliographic database covering all subjects which includes selected conference proceedings and over 34,000 journals. Scopus allows you to set up alerts for particular authors, documents (so that you are notified when someone cites a particular article), or searches. Searches can be for a range of criteria including keywords, journal title, and an author’s affiliation.

Scopus This link opens in a new window
Scopus gives references to peer-reviewed literature in all subject areas. It includes journal articles (including 'in press' items), books, conference proceedings and patents.

It is possible to search for topics, authors (including by ORCID ID), author affiliation and funders.

Extensive analytical tools also allow you to:

-analyse your search results by year, source, author, affiliation, country or territory, document type and subject area
-compare journal impact to help you decide where to publish
-see the citation impact and scholarly community engagement for an article
-analyse the citation trend for any given article, set of results or for a list of author documents
-view an author profile to analyse and track an individual's citation history

Help and guidance
Scopus Quick Reference Guide (PDF)
Tutorial of creating alerts
Scopus learn & support site

Google Scholar is the academic version of Google - it is not a database but a search engine. It will allow you to search the web for scholarly literature (journal articles, books, patents) from a variety of sources, including academic publishers, professional societies and online repositories, but there is no guarantee that what it finds has been through an editorial process. It is possible to set up simple searches as alerts.

The video below from Fiji National University explains how to set up a search alert.

Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
It is unclear which publishers are included in Google Scholar, so it shouldn't be used as your only source for a comprehensive literature search. For references to reliable, academic sources search our Summon discovery service or databases covering your subject.

Link to our full-text
You can set your preferences on Google Scholar to show links to full-text articles in all of our e-journals.

1) Click on the three lines on the top left of the home screen.
2) Select 'Settings'.
3) Select 'Library Links' on the left of the screen.
4) In the search box type 'Reading' and select the 'Reading University Library - Full-Text @ Reading' option.
5) Save your settings.

When you do a search, look for a 'Full-Text @ Reading' link to the right of references in your results list. This indicates that we have a subscription which will give you access to the article. Click on this link to access the full-text.

If the 'Full-text @ Reading' link does not appear next to a reference it indicates that it isn't covered by our subscriptions and you probably won't be able to access the article.

If you are off-campus you will need to login to access the articles. You will usually be prompted to login as soon as you click on the link to the article. If this doesn't happen you will need to look for an institutional or Shibboleth login link once you reach the journal's website. For more guidance see Accessing e-journals.

Google Scholar Button
Google have produced a plugin for Chrome, Firefox and Safari which allows you to easily search for and cite articles. Highlight the title of an article in the page you are reading and then click the Scholar button and it will search for the article on Google Scholar in a pop up window. To get a formatted reference for a search result press the quote button next to it and the reference will appear in three different styles.

To make the most of this tool set up the University of Reading as a 'Library Link' using the instructions above.

Social media

Weblogs or blogs can be a useful, informal way to keep-up-to-date with new developments. Your favourite researcher may write a blog, or you can search for one which covers your field of interest.

Altmetrics (alternative or non-traditional metrics) can help you track down bloggers and tweeters in your subject field. The amount of media attention an article receives is indicated by the Altmetric donut that you will see on a record for an article, for example in Summon. If you click on the donut, it will open an altmetric details page in the Altmetric.com website. From here you can find a list of bloggers or tweeters who have mentioned the article.

Potential problems include

blogs may be opinions rather than records of research
blogs are transient - they may disappear when researchers change jobs or interests

Search Summon

Search our discovery service Summon to find altmetrics for literature in your subject area.

Twitter can provide an indication of the immediate impact of a journal article. By following people with similar research interests you will hear about new articles first. Salma Patel provides a useful Prezi on 10 ways researchers can use Twitter (although a bit old now it still has some useful tips!)

10 ways researchers can use Twitter

You can find relevant tweeters on your topic by using Altmetrics (see the Blogs tab in this box)

There are a number of scholarly collaboration networks (SCNs) you can join to post articles, discover other articles and follow researchers.

Howcanishareit?
Find relevant networks with How can I share it? Tells you how you can share, where you can share and recommends sharing sites where you can engage and collaborate with the research community.
Mendeley
You may already use Mendeley to organize your references, but it includes a number of additional helpful features. If you create a research profile, you can discover and join subject oriented groups. Mendeley will also send you personalised suggestions of articles to read and people to follow.
Academia.edu
Academia.edu is a for-profit American social networking website for academics. The platform can be used to share papers, monitor their impact, and follow the research in a particular field.
ResearchGate
ResearchGate is a commercial social networking site for scientists and researchers to share papers, ask and answer questions, and find collaborators.

Please be aware that Academia.edu and ResearchGate are not open access archiving repositories and should not be used for this purpose. They do not fulfil funder and University Open Access requirements or HEFCE REF requirements, and they may infringe copyright. Before posting your articles to these sites, check each publishers policy on howcanishareit.com.