Medicine  Tags: medicine clinical_resources ebm evidence_based_medicine research_resources teaching_resources  

Keep up to date with the latest information and publishing in your research field with Table of Contents (ToC), Saved Search Alerts and RSS Feeds.

• Web of Science Citation Alerts - notify you by e-mail whenever an article you select is cited by a new article. To create a Citation Alert perform your search in Web of Science then click the Create Citation Alert button in the record display. You will be prompted to login or register at Web of Knowledge. The record will be added to your My Cited Articles List in Web of Knowledge. When you create a citation alert, Thomson Reuters notifies you by e-mail whenever a document has been cited by a new article. The alert is active for one year.
• Citation alerts are also available from Scopus.  Author Citation alerts notify you by e-mail when an author or group of matched authors is cited on Scopus. An Author Citation Alert can be created from an Author Details page and from author Cited By search results.

Contact your Faculty Liaison Librarian

Database search alert services allow you to save search strategies and receive automatic alerts of new results matching your strategy.

• Ovid AutoAlerts: With Ovid AutoAlerts it is possible to save a search strategy that will be run automatically each time the database is updated and the resulting citations emailed to you.  See Saving Search Strategies and Creating an AutoAlert pdf  for more information. Click here for instructions on how import references from an Ovid AutoAlert into your EndNote library.
• PubMed Search Alerts: Register for MyNCBI  (online tutorial) ; links are in the upper right corner and in the blue column at the left of the PubMed screen.  MyNCBI saves search strategies and has an option to automatically update and email search results on a schedule of your choice.  See PubMed's "Help" for more information. 
• Scopus Search Alerts  notify you by e-mail of new documents in Scopus that match the search in the alert. You can create a Search Alert from the Search History page, the Search Results page, and the My Profile page. You can also save Search Alerts from the Saved Searches page, which you can access from the My Profile page. See instructions for creating a search alert in Scopus.
• Web of Science alerts: Web of Science allows you to set up an automatic alert to email results to you weekly or monthly.  You can register or sign in on the first Web of Science screen, or at the point of saving a search strategy.  See "Help" within Web of Science for more information under Save Search History/ Search History Alerts.
• Other databases: Many other search services and databases offer alerts and the ability to save search strategies.See Alerting Services.      

Access databases

It is possible to set up an alert so that when a new issue of a journal is published you will receive an email or an updated RSS feed. Sign up to receive the tables of contents of your favorite journals.

• Individual Journal Table of Contents:  To set up alerts for your favorite journal, go to the online edition and follow the directions provided under headings such as "alerts" or "e-mail table of contents."  You can find eJournals by looking up the title in the Library Catalog

• OvidSP's eTOC feature sends an email alert whenever the table of contents for a journal is updated. You may sign up to receive an eTOC alert for any journal in the eTOC Subscriptions list whether your site subscribes to the journal or not. See OvidSP Online Help under OvidSP eTOC Management

• Current Contents Connect  TOC Alerts To set up an alert using Current Contents log in (or register for an account) and then choose My journals from the top menu and add preferred journal titles

• PubMed's MyNCBI: PubMed's MyNCBI feature can be used to set up email alerts for articles in your favorite journals indexed in PubMed/MEDLINE.  See a 4-minute demonstration video.  The email alert received will contain a link to PubMed search results. 

• ticTOCS Journal Tables of Contents Service: ticTOCs is a new scholarly journal tables of contents (TOCs) service. It’s free, its easy to use, and it provides access to the most recent tables of contents of over 11,000 scholarly journals from more than 400 publishers..  ticTOCs allows you to view, export to feed readers like Google Reader, or save to MyTOCS.
• Journal publishers will also usually offer Table of Contents services via email or RSS from their webpages. See Alerting Services for instructions and links.

RSS feeds are available wherever you see an icon like this 

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can make your web reading and information gathering activities more efficient. See Wikipedia or the BBC for more information, but basically RSS feeds enable you to collect new content from your favourite websites, news services, and databases in one place (without having to visit each site individually). RSS feeds automatically alert you to new content by feeding a summary of the new content to your desktop for your personal use. Each feed includes a headline, some descriptive content, and a URL that links back to the original content or website for more information. 

RSS is also used for distributing digital content including audio, video or pictures. Podcasting refers to the automatic ‘feeding’ of audio content (usually in MP3 format) to your desktop for you to listen to on your computer or MP3 player.

To read RSS feeds you will need a feed-reader (or aggregator) and, like email programs, there is a choice of readers to suit your particular needs. Some are programs you download and install on your computer; others are web-based services such as  Google Reader and Bloglines which are both free applications. Free web-based readers let you check RSS feeds from any computer, whereas downloadable applications (e.g. Newz Crawler, FeedDemon) let you store them on your own computer.  You can also use the RSS reader built into browsers such as Internet Explorer or Firefox or use Microsoft Outlook to receive RSS feeds.The reader will enable you to organise the RSS feeds in your personal collection, for example in folders (much like an email program).

If you choose to use Google Reader just register for a personal free account at www.google.com/reader.

Click on Add subscription and paste the RSS feed url into the box. Get the url by clicking on the RSS logo and copying from the web browser or following alternative instructions given nearby.  View your feeds at any time by logging into Google Reader.

IMPORTANT: RSS feeds urls from subscription databases may need the deletion of exproxy information for Google Reader to work (ie delete ezproxy2.library.usyd.au from the url)

Find RSS feeds from the ABC, BBC and newspapers like the Sydney Morning Herald or the Guardian as well as library databases and journal alerts.