Journal alerting services

One good way to keep abreast of developments in an academic discipline is by monitoring important journals as they are published. Many publishers provide access to journal tables-of-contents. Typically, these are free services, although you have to register first and you are limited to the titles and fields covered by that publisher. Some of these publishers also allow you to receive alerts based on keywords. Outlined below are a few of the services that cover a large number of journals and fields. Hundreds of publishers provide these services, so check individual publisher web sites for specific journals not covered by the services listed below.

Once you are 'alerted' to the existence of a journal issue or article, check Addison to see if the library has a print subscription or the E-Journals database to see if there is online availability. For journal articles not owned locally or available electronically, submit a request through ILLiad.

Emerald

Emerald, a trading name of MCB University Press Ltd, publishes about 150 journals in management, library & information services, engineering, and applied science & technology. Its alerting service,Emerald Alerts, provides three types to registered users: Saved Search Alerts, ToC (Table of Contents) Alerts, and Weekly Digests (e-mail summary of all Emerald Fulltext journals updated each week).

Infotrieve

Infotrieve is a large database of 20 million citations and 10 million abstracts of articles from scientific, technical, medical, and other scholarly content. Table of Contents (TOC) alert service is available to registered users. Only titles marked with theicon are available for alert and delivery. Infotrieve also provides a for-pay document delivery service similar to ingenta's service, but it is not subsidized by the Virginia Tech Library (unlike ingenta).

ingenta

ingenta is a comprehensive multi-disciplinary current awareness and document delivery service, covering more than 28,000 publications (including about 6000 online journals) from more than 190 publishers.

ingenta offers a free service -ingenta select - that allows registered users to create and maintain up to 5 e-journal Table of Contents (TOC) alerts from the online journals component of the ingenta database, with delivery format options of plain text, HTML, or Procite and Endnote compatible attachment.

There is also a subscription service -Reveal Alerts - where authorized users may select an unlimited number ofTOC alerts as well as keywordsearch alerts from the full ingenta database. The Virginia Tech Library subsidizes theReveal Alerts service for university faculty, staff, and students.

To use Reveal Alerts, go to the Virginia Tech ingenta Gateway and 'sign up' for a user ID and password. Once you have created an account and selected your journals and/or keywords, you will receive an e-mail alert each time there is a match between elements in your profile and the contents of the database. Table of contents alerts messages are sent when new issues are added to the database, while search alerts messages are sent weekly.

Many of the more than 2 million articles in the ingenta database are also available for fax or online delivery at no cost to Virginia Tech faculty, staff, and students provided: the item is not already owned by the Virginia Tech Libraries, the cost is $100 or less, and the article's author has granted permission for the full-text to be accessible. Some ingenta articles can be viewed immediately online while others are faxed to you, typically within 48 hours. The Library subsidizes the costs, but you order the document yourself rather than using the Library's usual document delivery service, ILLiad.

You must specify a Virginia Tech e-mail address (pid@vt.edu) in your profile in order to participate in the Reveal Alerts service. If your Virginia Tech e-mail is not your primary address, please forward your Virginia Tech e-mail to the preferred address.

Kluwer

Kluwer offers table of contents alerts for about 650 journals. Sign up at Kluwer Alerts. Subjects include: Arts, Astronomy / Astrophysics / Space Science, Biological Sciences, Business Administration, Chemistry, Computer and Information Science, Earth Sciences, Economics, Education, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Engineering Environmental Sciences, Humanities, Law, Linguistics, Materials Science, Mathematics, Medicine, Operations Research/Management Science, Philosophy, Physics, Psychology, and Social Sciences.

MetaPress

MetaPress provides access to hundreds of thousands of articles from nearly 3,000 journals, newsletters and other professional and academic publications from nearly 60 publishers. YOu must register to use theAlertingservice.

Sage

Register for Sage's Contents Alert service that allows you to receive via email the table of contents, call for papers information, special issue announcements, and other product information for any Sage Publications, Sage Science Press, or Corwin Press journal approximately four to six weeks prior to publication. Select from over 300 journals in these areas: Aging and Gerontology, Anthropology & Archaeology, Area & Ethnic Studies, Arts & Humanities, Business & Management, Communication & Media Studies, Computing, Counselling & Psychotherapy, Criminology & Criminal Justice, Cultural Studies, Education, Engineering, Family Studies, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Geography & Environmental Science, Health Sciences, History, Interpersonal/Domestic Violence, Mathematucxs & Statistics, Politicals & International Relations, Psychology, Research Methods & Evaluation, Social Work & Social Policy, Sociology, Vocational & Professional Studies.

Scholarly Articles Research Alerting

Sign up for SARA - a table-of-contents and keyword alerting service to over 750 academic peer-reviewed journals across a variety of disciplines published by Carfax, Psychology Press, Routledge, Spon Press, and Taylor & Francis.

ScienceDirect

ScienceDirect is a database from Elsevier Science that provides abstract and full-text access to over 1700 journals from several publishers. Nearly 4 million full-text articles from 1995 to present covering a wide variety of subject areas and disciplines are available. While the focus clearly is on science, technology, and medicine, there are many humanities and social sciences journals covered as well, so the name is a little misleading.

Registering to create a personal user ID and password on ScienceDirect, will enable you to take advantage of ScienceDirect's personalisation and alert services, which include: Search Alerts, Journal Issue Alerts, and Citation Alerts (when an article you select is cited by new articles added to the ScienceDirect database).

Springer

Sign up for SpringerLink Alert service that covers nearly 700 journals in these specialized areas: Chemical Sciences, Computer Science, Economics, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Geosciences, Law, Life Sciences, Mathematics, Medicine, Physics and Astrnomy.

Wiley InterScience:

Wiley offers two types of InterScience Alerts - table of contents alerts and profiled alerts(based on your saved search queries). You must first become a registered user. Nearly 500 journals covering these subjects are included: Business, Finance & Management, Chemistry, Computer Science, Earth Science, Education, Engineering, Law, Life and Medical Science, Mathematics and Statistics, Physics, and Psychology.

Last updated: 10/16/07 by Dave Beagle