A huge amount of research and journal articles are published daily, it is impossible to keep up to date with the amount of information being created. Current awareness services try to help researchers by alerting them about new journal articles in their field.
Save time by setting up alerts so that the information comes directly to you rather than you having to search for it repeatedly.
In order to receive email alerts you will need to 'Register' a personal account with the service you wish to receive the email alert from i.e. EBSCO, Web of Science, ScienceDirect etc.
Many online databases and general web sites such as news sites offer RSS (Really Simple) feeds, which are a convenient time-saving means of bringing together the latest tables of contents for your favourite journals or web sites into your own personal web page or software tool.
Feed Reader or News Aggregator software allow you to grab the RSS feeds from various sites and display them for you to read and use. There are also a number of web-based feed readers available. Feedly and NewsBlur are popular web-based feed readers.
Mailing Lists, Newsgroups and Discussion Boards are also a good source of information to keep you up-to-date with new conferences, calls for papers, and current academic debate.
They can also help you identify the key players in your field and form networks of academic contacts. However it is worth remembering that mailing lists can generate a large amount of information emailed to your inbox so be careful not to over-subscribe!
Useful ways to keep in touch with other researchers and promote your profile
To establish an online presence you many wish to use one of the more popular sites listed here such as:
Or,
Off course you can use social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook too.
Ensuring your research is as freely accessible as possible can help raise your profile online
Calls for conference papers and announcements about upcoming events are often posted to active discussion mailing lists such HEANET and JISCMail.
Conference Alerts is a free website where conference organisers can list academic conferences and can be searched by topic or country.
Emerald's Guide to Effective Social Media for Authors - connect with academics and peers in your field.
You can use Google Scholar to find scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books and technical reports from broad areas of research from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, as well as grey literature on the web.
►Library Preference
Set ATU as your library preference if you are off campus. Go to settings to do this. If you have access to other libraries you can add additional library preferences
►Email Alerts
Do a search for your area of interest, from the results screen click the envelope icon in the sidebar on the left; enter your email address, and click "Create alert". You will be email newly published papers that match your search criteria.
►Google Scholar Citations
A simple way for authors to keep track of citations to their articles. You can check who is citing your publications & graph citations over time. You can also make your profile public, so that it appears in Google Scholar results when people search for your name.
►Citation Export
Visit the settings page and select your preferred citation format in the "Bibliography Manager" section i.e. EndNote. Once you've saved your settings an import link will be added to each search result. Click on the link to export the citation.