Keeping up to date

Keeping Up To Date

The library newsletter will alert you to new resources and other important news. Contact library@monashhealth.org to receive the newsletter by email.

Scroll down for guidance on how to get the latest research into your inbox by setting up alerts for journals and publications.

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Alerts for Journals and Publications

BrowZine

BrowZine is a mobile app and electronic bookshelf you can use to access the library’s journal collection.

Set up an individual account and install the mobile app (iTunes App Store or Android) for ease of access via your phone. An individual account will provide you with your own bookshelf so you can favourite journals and save articles.

BrowZine training guide

Read by QxMD

Read by QxMD is a mobile app and email alerting service you can use to track research and journal articles as they are published. Read gives you easy, mobile access to medical journals and allows you to set up a customised newsfeed based on the specialities, favourite journals and keyword searches you set up.

View the Read by QxMD user guide

The user guide provides instructions on setting up the mobile app, which will drive your email alerts.

Journal tables of contents (TOC)

eTOC alerts provide the latest table of contents from selected journals each time a new issue is published. There are a number of different options from individual journals, to publisher feeds and eTOCs platforms that scan a vast array of scholarly journals.

View our guide on Journal eTOC alerts

Google Scholar

Google Scholar alerts are best for locating grey literature, conference papers and other research published online. It is not suitable for monitoring new journal articles (for which we recommend subscription based resources such as Read by QxMD and BrowZine). While Google Scholar may include journal articles, it will also have much more “noise” in it’s results including non-scholarly articles not subject to peer review.

Video Tutorial – How to set up Google Scholar alerts

Newsletters

Recommended industry newsletters from scientific publishers, health agencies and associations, which can be set up as direct email alerts.

Recommended newsletters

Visit each site and sign up by creating an individual account and providing your email address.

UpToDate Practice Changing UpDates

Practice Changing UpDates highlights selected specific new recommendations and/or updates that are anticipated to change usual clinical practice. Practice Changing UpDates focus on changes that may have significant and broad impact on practice.

Saved Searches, Alerts and Pre-built Searches

Ovid Search Alerts

It is possible to save searches created in databases on the Ovid platform and to elect to receive new results matching your search by email.

The first step is to register for an individual account, which will also allow you to save searches for re-running at a later date or for later use with further refinement. The next step is to build you search, save it and enter alerting preferences.

Instructions on creating an Ovid account, saving searches and setting alert preferences appear in the Medline, Embase and Emcare user guides.

PubMed Alerts

The expansiveness of PubMed makes it a useful platform for search alerts – particularly for current and frequently updating topics. Before creating and saving your search, you will need to set up your own My NCBI account where you will manage and store your search.

Video instructions – Saving searches and creating alerts

Be aware that if you limit your PubMed search to MeSH controlled vocabulary or Medline records, you will see only Medline citations in your results.

Citation Alerts

Citation alerts are a useful tool for tracking new references to your own work or articles of particular interest.

It is possible to set up citation alerts in most databases that have a search function, however Google Scholar is an open, ubiquitous tool that will not limit results by publisher or article type. This 5 minute video provides instructions on creating Google Alerts.