Information
Finding Information
New Journal Notification
RSS feeds and journal alert services are good ways to keep abreast of new journal publications in your areas of interest. CSDE is happy to help you set up a method that is tailored to your needs. If you would like assistance, please email csde@u.washington.edu.
RSS Feeds
RSS stands for 'Really Simple Syndication'. It is a means for you to subscribe to journals, websites, or blogs and receive notifications in the form of RSS 'feeds' when those sites are updated. It also allows you to receive aggregate feeds from multiple sources all in one location. You can get updates delivered to your email, via an RSS feed, or stored in a personal account on an external website.
A typical RSS feed will list a title, author, and abstract, with a link to the full article. RSS feeds will update automatically when a new article is posted, which can save you the trouble of checking and rechecking sources for new articles and updates.
RSS feeds are sent to an RSS reader, and there are many free readers available on the web. You can find a clear comparison of RSS readers here.
Once you have chosen a reader, RSS feeds are very easy to subscribe to.
When you are at a journal page, look for the RSS symbol 
.
Click on it and follow the instructions.
An example of how to subscribe to a journal RSS feed using Google Reader can be found here.
Journal Alert Notification
Journal alert notification is a service offered by many journal providers. Typically a notice is sent to your email announcing a new journal issue. Some notices just announce the new issue and include a link with table of contents information. Others come as a Table of Contents (TOC) notification which displays article titles, authors, page numbers, and abstracts. The TOC format is ideal for individuals who use them to copy and paste references of interest into their bibliographic files. Unfortunately many of the alert services do not provide alerts in the TOC format.
Journal alert notification delivery does require some management. Each journal provider requires that you create a user account in order to sign-up for or modify your alert preferences, and the process is a little different for every journal provider. An example of how to sign up for TOC delivery through Web of Science is available here. CSDE is happy to help manage your TOC deliver accounts.
Some general alert notification services do exist, and may be the easiest method to use. You may want to check these to see if the journal(s) you prefer are listed here:
- ticTOCs
- Delivery method: RSS feed, web storage; email delivery not available
- UW restricted: No
- This free, UK-based service is very simple to use. It contains 12,571 scholarly titles from 437 publishers. Your TOCs may either be stored on the website, delivered to a feedreader such as Google Reader, or both. Though easy and convenient, there are a limited number of titles available; your preferred journal(s) may not be included.
- Project Muse
- Delivery method: Email alert, RSS feed
- UW restricted: Yes, though TOCs may be viewed without subscription
- Project Muse is managed by the Johns Hopkins University Press, but provides full-text access to scholarly articles by several other collaborating publishers. A list of the contributing publishers and the journals they supply is available here.
- Population Digital Library
- Delivery method: Varies
- UW restricted: Varies
- This is not a delivery service in itself; rather, it is a list of health-related journals maintained by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Each listing indicates whether or not the journal has TOC delivery available, and a link to the setup page. This is a good option if you are looking to subscribe to the TOCs of only one journal. However, since it may redirect you to many different TOC delivery services, it is not ideal if you would like multiple journals. Please contact CSDE info to help you set up delivery of multiple TOCs you find in this list.