Journal Alert Services for Current Awareness through Ball State University Libraries

In response to the exponential increase of available information, journal publishers and database vendors offer a variety of alert services. These services provide a way to keep up with what is new. They offer an automatic current awareness functionality that helps students and researchers remain aware about the new literature in their areas of interest and to organize and manage this information.

Ball State University Libraries offer alert services to the campus community through database and journal subscriptions. While the names for these services and the procedures for setting them up vary among vendors, most require registration and establishment of a personal profile. Commonly available alert services include:
· Table of contents alerts – that provide e-mail notifications of the table of contents of the most current issues of journals specified when signing up
· Daily/weekly email alerts – e-mail notifications of articles that match submitted criteria with the frequency of the alert varying on when the publishers update their databases
· Saved search alerts – e-mail notifications of recent articles matching previous searches

Most journal publishers and professional organizations offer alert services on their Web sites. These are generally available to anyone. An example is Scholarly Articles Research Alerting, (SARA), www.tandf.co.uk/sara, which sends notifications and table of contents for the journals published by Carfax, Martin Dunitz, Psychology Press, Routledge, Spon Press, and Taylor & Francis.

Google Alerts offer e-mail updates of the latest relevant Google results (Web, news, etc.) based on the users choice of query or topic. Try this free service, www.google.com/alerts.

Students, faculty, and staff can select databases or journals in their areas of interest and sign up to receive regular e-mail alerts, including alerts about newly published research articles and tables of contents for issues of their favorite journals as soon as they are published.

If you have questions about alert services, please contact Hilde Calvert at (765) 285-8033 or e-mail HCalvert@bsu.edu.