Keeping Up to Date with Literature in your field

Browzine

Browzine is great for current awareness and browsing journal content. Browzine is perfect for you if you want to regularly read new issues of specific journals.

• Discover – search for a known title or browse by subject area.
• My Bookshelf – build your own personal library and organise your journals how you want. 
• Alerts let you know when new articles have been published to help you stay up to date with your research.
• Save articles in your library for later reading. Download, share citations over Twitter and manage references in EndNote or another reference manager. 
• Mobile compatible – the BrowZine App syncs across devices so you can access your collection wherever you go.   

Start using the desktop version or download the free app from the Apple and Amazon App Stores and from Google Play. After downloading the app, find Cardiff University in the list and enter your credentials when prompted.

Journal Updates

Journal alerts allow you to keep up to date with newly published articles from your favourite journals. They are perfect for you if you want an alert to come through to your email so you can look up the content later.

• You can set up alerts to receive the table of contents of new journal issues as they are published, articles by specific authors, and keyword searches by using Zetoc. Available to be used by current students and staff, this is a multi-disciplinary database of 20,000 research journals, and 16,000 conference proceedings.
• For the largest freely available collection of scholarly journal Tables of Contents (TOCs), use JournalTOCs. It is for anyone who’s looking for the latest or most current papers published in the scholarly literature. It is free, searchable, and provides alerts on request.

Current Awareness Bulletins.

Many organisations produce bulletins which allow you to keep up to date with their areas of expertise, and are free and easy to subscribe to. For example:

• NICE Newsletter for clinical standards and guidance
• Welsh Government Health and Social Service
• Drug and Therapeutic Bulletin

Database Alerts

Search alerts can be set up within databases to provide automatic notification when new results are available. They are a perfect way for you to stay up to date on specific content in your subject area without having to constantly re-enter the exact search terms into a databases. You really need a robust search strategy for this to be of maximum benefit. Get in touch with us in the library if you need more help with this.

• You can set up database search alerts to notify you by email when new results relating to your search are added to the database. You will need to register with a database in order to save your search.

Citation Alerts

Citation alerts are a good way of keeping track of essential articles in your subject area by building on resources you have already identified as being very helpful. If an article, which cites your selected article or author, is added to the database you will be alerted. Citation databases, such as Scopus and Web of Science, offer the option of citation alerts. Google Scholar will also enable you to track citations.

Altmetrics

Use altmetrics to track articles and receive email alerts when a particular item such as a journal article is mentioned, by using unique IDs such as DOIs, or keywords.

Altmetrics are perfect to:

• Monitor the attention that a paper or other item that you or someone else has authored receives on social media, in newspapers, in patents, in policy documents etc.
• Discover how your research may be being used in a way you’ve not considered
• Discover popular new content to read e.g. a Tweet may mention something interesting in relation to your work

News Stories

• Create an alert to be notified by email of news stories on your selected topic. For news reports, including UK national and regional newspapers and major newspapers from around the world use Nexis UK .
• If you are using BBC News  to follow a story you can subscribe to text messages for updates (cost is 10p per text). Alternatively use the BBC News app and set it to push news stories to your mobile device.

Mailing Lists

Joining a mailing list is a good way to ensure you don’t miss out on key discussions around a topic. JISCmail  is a service designed specifically for the education and research communities and provides access to UK academic discussion lists. You can search or browse by subject category to find lists on a specific topic and subscribe to receive email alerts.