RESEARCH SKILLS KEEPING UP TO DATE WITH YOUR RESEARCH An alerting service enables you to keep up to date with the latest research and literature in your field of study. An alerting service saves you time as it eliminates the need to re-do searches regularly. The terminology for alerts varies. They may be called alerts, e-mail updates, create profile, register, my account, auto alert, favourites or RSS feeds. More information about the alerting service is usually given when you click on the term. Managing your alerts Some of your alerts will be required for a short time only, eg. while writing an assignment or conference paper, but others may be required for a much longer time, eg. updating a course you are teaching or research for a post-graduate degree. It is therefore important to know how to delete or edit your alerts, how to keep track of your alerts in a management file and how to unsubscribe from the service. This is particularly pertinent for RSS feeds as they generally fill up your inbox very quickly and prevent any other messages from being sent or received. Types of alert RSS Feeds (Real Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary) RSS is technology that allows content or headlines from a blog and other changing web pages eg. news sites, newsletters, journals, podcasts, publishers’ homepages, subject databases, etc, to be viewed in a software application called a feed reader or aggregator. Other names for RSS feeds are Web feeds, XML feeds, RSS channels, and syndicated content. UNISA LIBRARY University of South Africa © 2011 RESEARCH SKILLS Links are given to the full article, news item or whatever you are monitoring. RSS is an excellent way of distributing regularly updated content without having to go to all the individual sites that interest you. Numerous readers are available and you should choose the one that suits you best. Examples include Microsoft Outlook Google reader (http://www.google.com/reader/view/) To set up a RSS feed, first subscribe to your chosen RSS feed. Look out for this standard icon reader. . Right-click on the icon and copy and paste it into your RSS Journal tables of content (TOC) A TOC alert tells you when new issues of your chosen journals are available. It is one of the best ways of keeping up to date with the latest articles, current research and publishing trends in your field. The TOC is often published before the journal is generally accessible to subscribers. TOCs can be set up from publishers’ websites, subject databases, Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory and the Unisa Library’s e-Journal Finder. RefAware RefAware (http://0-refaware.com.oasis.unisa.ac.za) is a web-based current awareness service designed to provide researchers and other members of the academic community with immediate access to new research and publications in their field – all within hours of being posted online. UNISA LIBRARY University of South Africa © 2011 RESEARCH SKILLS Providing one source for a variety of research data, RefAware constantly scans the Internet for the latest information and automatically delivers newly-found data. By harnessing the speed and accessibility of the Internet, RefAware provides a comprehensive, up-to-the-minute picture of today’s global research and includes the following subject areas Arts & Humanities Business Engineering Life Sciences, Biology and Medicine Physical Sciences Social Sciences RefAware's source coverage search window (http://www.refaware.com/journalcoverage.aspx) enables you to confirm whether a journal title is covered in this resource. RefAware is a registered trademark of RefWorks to which the Unisa Library subscribes. Subject databases Most of the subject databases the Unisa library subscribes to allow you to set up free alerts to new content via e-mail or RSS feeds. Please remember that you should choose the e-mail option if you have off-campus access to the library. You may use the RSS option if you are on the campus. The alerts may take the form of Table of Contents: these are generated and delivered each time a new issue of an individual publication is available Saved Search Alerts: the database will periodically re-run your search and send you new material Topic Alerts: the database will automatically send you new articles on preselected topics Citation Alerts: informs you every time a selected document or author is subsequently cited in the same database UNISA LIBRARY University of South Africa © 2011 RESEARCH SKILLS Mailing lists and newsgroups Mailing lists are e-mail based discussion groups. By joining a mailing list, you are automatically connected to like-minded colleagues and you are also kept up to date with current thinking and research in your field. Since some mailing lists are very active and you might find the volume of material overwhelming, it is important to select your mailing lists very carefully. Most of them have an archive so you can check on the quality of the information and the number of messages that are sent out before you sign up. Remember that some mailing lists allow you to receive your messages in a daily digest instead of individually, which allows you to manage the information better. An example of a general mailing list is the Scout Report. Published every Friday both on the web and by e-mail, it provides a fast, convenient way to stay informed of valuable resources on the Internet. An example of a mailing list for the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences is H-Net Online. Newsgroups also keep you up-to-date and bring like-minded people together. They can be formed around any number of topics or professional interests, eg. Google groups. You can send and receive messages, but you access the newsgroup’s files UNISA LIBRARY University of South Africa © 2011 RESEARCH SKILLS Blogs Blogs can be defined as online diaries which offer an instant publishing forum allowing you to disseminate information to lots of people at one time. Some blogs also have RSS feeds so you can keep up-to-date with your favourite bloggers. Blogdigger and Amatomu (for South African blogs) are useful blog-specific search engines, but bear in mind that a blog’s content can be as varied as the people writing them so you need to investigate each blog before you sign up. Important criteria to look for include how often it is updated, what the source of the information is and how objective it is. Professional bodies and societies These are useful for information concerning your field, eg. news of forthcoming conferences, journals, newsletters and other in-house publications. Professional organisations often have student rates if you need to subscribe in order to have access to this information. Unisa Library new books list on the library catalogue All new material in any format which has been accessioned in the last month will be listed in Find new books on the library’s homepage (http://oasis.unisa.ac.za/ftlist). UNISA LIBRARY University of South Africa © 2011