1. Keeping up to Date with Research
in the Social Sciences
Susan Heaster - Faculty Team Librarian
Tony Simmonds - Faculty Team Leader

2. Learning outcomes
Enable you to:




Set up table of contents & saved search alerts
Subscribe to RSS feeds in your subject area
Create a personalised webpage
Consider the role of social media in the
research cycle

3. Keeping up to date
 Vital for all researchers; BUT
 Volume of new information is huge
 Tools to manage information overload

4. Alerting services
Why?
 Helps save time by capturing relevant
information and delivering directly to desktop
How?
 Set up a profile (username, password, email
address). Do not need to be the same as your
university details.

5. Receiving Alerts for new publications
Publisher websites allow you to set up an email alerting profile
to receive details of new titles for subjects of interest to you.
Examples of key publishers in the area of social work:
 Jessica Kingsley http://www.jkp.com/
 Policy Press http://www.policypress.co.uk/
 SAGE http://uk.sagepub.com

6. Communities of Interest: Mailing lists
 JISCmail
The mailing list provider for the UK academic community.
 CataList
A directory of the public LISTSERV lists on the Internet.
 Yahoo Groups
A directory of publicly available Yahoo groups
 Google Groups
Browse current and an archive of posts from 1995.

7. Services for keeping up to date
with internet resources
 Google Alerts
http://www.google.com/alerts
 Giga Alert
http://www.gigaalert.com
 Watch That Page
http://www.watchthatpage.com
 Change Detection
http://www.changedetection.com

8. Alerts - journal publications

Table of Contents (TOC) Alerts - email notification when new issue of
a specific journal title is published. Often receive the alert in advance of
print publication.

Saved Search Alerts - save searches on chosen keywords/authors,
then schedule to re-run automatically against new content in the
database at a set frequency. Receive an email notification of the results.

9. Table of Contents (TOC) alerts

ZETOC (British Library)
Access to the British Library's Electronic Table of Contents (ETOC).
Covering all subject areas - approximately 28,000 current journals +
6,000 conference proceedings published every year. Alerts by email or
RSS feed.
https://zetoc.mimas.ac.uk/

JournalTOCs
http://www.journaltocs.ac.uk/

10. Setting up saved searches
 Some databases allow you to save search sets. Register
with the database to use this feature.
 Database interfaces differ, but principles of saving
searches broadly the same.

Saved Search Alerts - re-run saved search automatically
at



set intervals.
email notifications
Generally expire after a year
delete / renew regularly (many expire after a year)

11. Databases
Social science databases
Some databases for you to try…





ProQuest host (e.g. ABI/INFORM, ASSIA, British Education Index, IBSS,
Sociological Abstracts, Worldwide Political Science Abstracts)
Business Source Premier (EBSCO)
Psycinfo (OVID)
Scopus
Web of Science
All allow creation of Alerts which will deliver a report of new data
associated with your saved search strategy via email.

12. Citation Alerts
 Feature of Web of Science and Scopus
 Notify when an article of interest is referenced
or cited by another publication.

13. General tips
 Databases may use different names for alerting services look for links to “Alerts”, “Updates”, “SDI”, “Save search”
 Most databases allow multiple alerts:
 Use separate alerts for different subjects
 Give alerts meaningful names to organise them
Be ruthless! Amend or delete any searches which
are not returning helpful results.

14. What is an RSS feed?
RSS = Rich Site Summary (or "Really Simple Syndication“)
Pushes automatic updates when new content is available
Suits frequently updated web sources - blogs, news
Need an RSS Reader (also called feed readers, feed aggregators &
news readers) to receive feeds
 desktop-based (e.g. Outlook)
 browser-based ( e.g. Internet Explorer, Firefox)
 web-based (Netvibes, Bloglines)
 Find out more http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10628494





17. Have a go…
 Register for one of the feed reader services (e.g.
Bloglines, NewsGator)
 Identify a discussion group in your subject
 Set up an alert for your favourite journals
 Set up a saved search or a citation alert

18. Communities of Interest: Social Media
• Web services where content is generated by users
– Social interaction: communicate and collaborate
– knowledge exchange: produce, disseminate, discuss and
consume information
Social media: A guide for researchers
http://www.rin.ac.uk/social-media-guide

19. http://prezi.com/wpex31xj_9kv/what-the-tweet-social-media-forgrad-students/

20. Social media tools for researchers
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Social & professional networking tools
Social bookmarking
Social citation sharing
Blogging
Microblogging
Research & writing collaboration tools
Reference management and sharing tools

21. Blogosphere
 Online diary + multimedia
 Fast, easy, free web publishing
 Why …?
Float ideas / reflect on developments?
Feedback – informal peer review?
Disseminate research findings?
Engage with public outside HE?
Build your profile / reputation?

28. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/

29. Blog writing tips
 PGR Tips on writing great blog posts
http://www.vitae.ac.uk/CMS/files/upload/PGR-Tips-issue54-on-blogging.pdf
 So, You Want to Start an Academic Blog? Four
Tips to Know Before You Start
http://getalifephd.blogspot.com/2011/02/so-you-wantto-start-academic-blog-four.html

31. What is Twitter?
 real-time information network
 Updates tailored to what you find interesting
 Tweet is a burst of information 140 characters in
length (e.g. „headline‟ with links)
 contribute or just follow conversations
 good for networking - “virtual water cooler”

32. “Why do you find Twitter useful as
an academic?” http://markcarrigan.net/
 Isolation of a PhD
- engage with global community
- discussion, support, advice, exchange references
 Engage with practitioners and experts
- networking
- reality check
 Keep up to date
- policy issues, developments, new ideas, blogs, publications, etc
- augments F2F academic conferences, extends the conversations
 Dissemination
- increased visibility
- spread word to non-academic audiences (public engagement)
- shameless self-promotion

34. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2011/09/
29/twitter-guide/

35. Research Communities Online
 New generation of online research communities
 Mendeley / Zotero: social networking built on reference
management software (http://www.mendeley.com/ )
 ResearchGate (http://www.researchgate.net/ )
 Academia (http://academia.edu/ )
 Build research profile
 Manage and share references / papers; monitor impact
 Ask / answer questions
 Join networks of interest / find collaborators

36. Thank you for your attention.
Any Questions?