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How Can I Keep My Research Up-To-Date?

It is important that you keep abreast of new research and development in your subject area as your research progresses. You can do this by using a range of Current Awareness Services which enable you to keep up to date with books being published, periodical articles, conference papers, newspapers, official publications, patents, standards, web sites, television and radio and, most important of all, people (through discussion lists).

Some services offer automatic alerting - the current awareness services mentioned above - and will email you regularly with new information. Others, called passive services, expect you to visit the site on a regular basis to keep up to date. Information overload is easy. Make sure you only register with as many services as you can realistically cope with!

Increasingly websites - which include many e-journal websites or bibliographic databases - offer the possibility of an RSS feed, in which new information added to the website is 'fed' to you via an RSS reader.  There is a wide choice of RSS readers available (they are usually free) including readers that you can download onto your own PC or readers that you can access via the World-Wide Web. This is the better way of reading RSS feeds as they can be accessed from anywhere, rather than having the feeds delivered to a PC or laptop. Web-based readers include Google Reader and Bloglines. A word of caution. Tempting though it might be to subscribe to a wide range of RSS feeds this is a very easy way to make you feel overloaded with information.

A useful Table of Contents site is ticTOCs - described as being 'where researchers keep up to date'...

New books

Publishers will send you regular emails (or RSS feeds - see above) to alert you to new books (e.g. Springer, Stationery Office) and some bookshops will also send alerts by subject (e.g. Natural History Bookshop, Books for Academics).

New periodical articles

A simple way of keeping up to date with new periodical articles appearing in your area of interest is to browse your favourite periodical titles in the Library (or online if the periodical is available in electronic form) at regular intervals. The current issues of most journals that we take are displayed on the appropriate floor of the Library, the exception to this rule being Sports Science journals, which would normally be scattered over all three floors of the Library. The current issues of these journals are brought together and displayed at a single location on the Ground Floor of the Library.

If you haven't got the time for browsing new issues of periodicals then an alerting service may fulfil your needs.

ZETOC Alert is a service from the British Library which allows you to select your favourite titles from their list of 20,000 periodicals and have the their table of contents emailed to you regularly. Off-campus access to ZETOC requires Shibboleth authentication.

Some bibliographic databases include an alerting service, which means that you can conduct a complex subject search and save the search strategy as an email alert. This is a very effective way of keeping up to date in a specific subject. As examples the databases available through Cambridge Scientific Abstracts and Ovid provide current awareness facilities.

Some publishers will also send regular email alerts of the tables of contents of their periodical titles including:

New websites

The Scout Report is a weekly publication produced by the Internet Scout Project, based at the University of Wisconsin and funded by the US National Science Foundation. It offers a selection of new and newly-discovered Internet resources of interest to researchers.

Free Pint is a community of 40,000+ business information searchers around the world. The twice monthly newsletter contains tips for finding reliable web sites.

SearchDay is a free newsletter from Search Engine Watch featuring web search news, reviews, tools, tips, and search engine headlines from across the web. SearchDay is published daily, with headlines only on Fridays.

The media

TRILT - The Television and Radio Index for Learning and Teaching is an extensive online database of UK television and radio programmes including terrestrial, cable, and satellite television (with regional variations), all national and many local radio stations.

Science Policy Information News (SPIN) is a free weekly round up of news covering UK research policy, funding, health services and international issues provided by the Wellcome Trust. You can register to receive email or print copies.

Patents

Patent Alert from the US Patent and Trademark Office is a free email publication for people interested in patents. Upon subscription, you will receive regular updates about inventions recently patented in the United States. The updates will include descriptions of patents in the fields of your choice and you can choose to receive updates daily, weekly, bi-weekly or monthly. Using the system of customisable subscriptions, you should be able select only the content that is relevant to you.

Standards

There is no service for automatically notifying individuals of new standards relevant to their research, so check the sites below at regular intervals to see whether any relevant standards exist in your area of research.

Discussion lists

Discussion lists allow you to follow and join in discussions in subject areas of interest to you. Discussion lists are an excellent way to find out what your colleagues are doing around the world and to ensure that you are up to date on news and developments in your subject area.

New jobs

Professional organisations and the World-Wide Web

Some professional organisations offer a similar service to members. If there is a professional organisation in your subject area they may well offer job listings, though access to these listings may be restricted to members of that professional body.

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