Alerts on new editions of a journal or new articles

If you would like to follow a journal closely, it can be useful to set up an alert with the journal that can notify you as soon as it is published. You need to find the journal's website and create an alert on the table of contents, which will then be sent via email or RSS. There are also journals which can send alerts regarding new articles that have been published online, an Online First Alert.

Alerts on specific searches in a database

Many of the large databases give you the opportunity to save a search on specific criteria such as keywords, author's name or journal title. This can be combined with an alert from the database at predefined time intervals, which can notify you of the existence of any new articles matching those search criteria. This gives you the opportunity to follow developments in a topic across many journals. Typically, you will need to access the search history, save a search and then create an alert on it.

Alerts on citations of your own articles or a particular article in Scopus and Web of Science

If you are working in a field where a specific article is a landmark work, or if have you written an article yourself that has been indexed by Scopus or Web of Science, then you can, for example, get an alert every time Scopus or Web of Science registers a new reference/citation of this article. These alerts can come via e-mail or RSS. Read more about alerts in Scopus and Web of Science.

JournalTOCs

JournalTOCs is a collection of tables of contents of more than 28,000 journals, some of which are Open Access journals and others of which are hybrids. Meaning that they contain some Open Access articles and some articles for which you must pay for access. You can create a profile on JournalTOCs and select the journals which you would like to follow and obtain information via email or RSS. The information will be somewhat delayed with respect to alerts created via the journals' own websites, but it can act as a supplement when you can't get alerts from the journals themselves.

Alerts via apps

Several journals offer the opportunity to get an alert via an app when new issues of the journal are published. These apps can be typically found via App Store or Google Play. When you install the app, you should be on Eduroam, or AU's internal network so that you can be recognized as an AU user.