INF 330: Advanced Research Skills

There are many ways to stay up-to-date with the latest literature! 

PubMed:

PubMed allows searchers to create a MyNCBI account to save their searches and have alerts emailed when there are new articles about their search topic.  Be sure to use the unique MCPHS PubMed link so that you will be able to access the full-text for any journal subscriptions to which the library subscribes. 

RSS Feeds:

RSS (Realy Simple Syndication) is an XML-based format for sharing and distributing frequently updated Web content. A RSS feed pushes out information to your RSS reader or aggregator when a website is updated. Many readers will sync your feeds and favorites across computers and mobile devices, and you can put RSS feeds directly into your browser. Popular RSS readers include Feedly and NewsBlur. 

ToC Alerts (Table of Contents Alerts):

Table of Contents Alerts make it easy to stay up-to-date with newly published literature.  There are a couple of different ways to get Table of Contents Alerts:

• eTOCs (electronic Table of Contents): eTOCs is a free service providing table of contents or a notification of availability when new issues of a journal are published online.  Readers can usually subscribe to these email updates on the journal's homepage.  Note: You can sign up for eTOCs even if you do not subscribe to the journal.  Full-text access depends on the publisher's restrictions. 
• JournalTOCS: JournalTOCS Table of Contents service makes it easy to keep up-to-date with newly published scholarly material by allowing you to find tables of contents for thousands of journals.  This service collects articles' metadata of table of contents for over 32,783 journals directly collected from over 3333 publishers.  Browse by subject area, journal title, or combine multiple journal titles into a single feed!  If you sign up for a JournalTOCS account you can receive tables of contents from your favorite journals by email or RSS feed.

Twitter:

Follow journals on Twitter to keep up with the latest literature!  Look for the journal's Twitter handles on their homepage, or search for them directly on Twitter.  Examples of journals to follow include @NEJM, @Health_Affairs, and @JAMA_current. 

This interactive tutorial will show you how to save searches and set email alerts in PubMed.  Click the image below to get started!