Hi all, can i just say on the outset that I really appreciate this site so much, it has made me feel validated to see that i am not alone in this (horrendous) life-choice of constant swings in motivation.

I've just started my second year in my Phd journey and this question may sound really dumb to most of you but better late than never, I suppose :$ Thing is I wonder if there is a search engine or something out there like a rss feed (?) that any of you may know of, that enables me to find the most current trends in the research/literature that I am interested in? i am in the social sciences by the way.. I know that maybe there is no short cut to the slog of wading through tonnes of journals of at least in the past five years... but I am realising now that some of the stuff important to my research is also found in journals that aren't usually related to my topic of interest!

Thanks all.. hope to hear from some of you

anne_(sprout)

======= Date Modified 26 Jan 2011 06:48:24 =======
======= Date Modified 26 Jan 2011 06:01:08 =======
Hi Anne

I teach information literacy to undergrads and Master students at my uni so I would be interested to hear what others do. There are a few things you can do to make you a more savvy searcher.

The most obvious thing is set up an email alert to be notified when a new issue of a particular journal you like comes out. Access an individual journal title via the electronic journals on your library's website and then click and follow instructions to set up ToC alert.

Another way to go about this is to go to the websites of the journal publishers themselves via the databases on your uni's library website and you can set up alerts for any of the titles you are interested in. I'm in the social sciences as well and I have alerts set up through Sage, Routledge (Taylor & Francis) and Science Direct. It's actually a good way of seeing the different titles that there are out there but that you were not aware of, in a way "the known unknowns"!! I have come across lots of good journal titles this way.

Just one word of warning: after you access the list of journal titles a publisher/database has, take it easy selecting alerts. I went a bit mad at first and had way too many ToC alerts coming through my inbox. Still I find it a great way of keeping up to date with what's in my field. I am in my third year and am writing up but I have some 2010 refs in my bibliograpy and will probably have a few 2011 refs before I submit (fingers and toes crossed!) during the summer.

I'd be interested to know if anybody else does something different.

A :-)

Also!! Just remembered, you can also set up an alert via Google Scholar - 'create email alert'. You can set up an alert for a topic area, date range etc. There are lots of options. Also many people don't click on the Advanced scholar search in Google scholar but there are lots of options there to refine your search. Every so often I do an author search via Google Scholar to see if my key authors have written anything new.

There are lots of meta search engines out there as well which can help. Some require you to register but generally even if they do it is free. These search multiple search engines at once. You can however get overloaded with info this way. A couple I am aware of, though confess rarely use as I prefer to go direct to the databases are:

Dogpile, at www.dogpile.com
www.metacrawler.com.

I've just googled 'meta search engines' and there is a very long list of them via Wiki.



Just thought of something else so I modified my original post!!

Forgive me if you are already aware but many people are not - each subject has its own subject librarian (this should be the case for any academic library). There are a number of things you can do via your library website. Different libraries call them different things but essentially there should be a 'subject resources' section on your library website where you can access key journals and websites for your overall subject. A good subject librarian should be adding to this all the time.

Gateway sites such as BUBL and Intute for the social sciences are good but there are plenty more. Again a lot of information can come back at you so try to refine your search as you go.

www.bubl.ac.uk
http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/


You are also quite entitled to set up a meeting with a real live subject librarian!! Again this is a service most, if not all academic libraries offer but few avail of. Meet him or her and go through with them the key websites etc in your field.

Happy searching (up)

Great post Ady! I will defiantly be setting some alerts!

The other thing I was thing of to get your bases of previous research covered is to look at some of the reviews (systematic or Cochran) in your field. They often included hundreds of studies and so are a great place to start.

Good Luck!

Thank you! OMG thank you so much!