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Research Guides

Keeping Current with Research: Journal TOC Alerts

Learn how to harness the power of RSS feeds and other alerts for research pursuits.

What are Table of Contents Alerts?

Journal TOC Alert - Notification of tables of contents from journals when new issues are published.

To set up a journal TOC alert:

  • Search to see if UI Library has a current subscription. Electronic Journals
    • If we do not have a subscription, use Google to find the journal's home page on its publisher's website. Even if we don't subscribe, you should still be able to set up an alert to view the table of contents of each issue.
    • Not all database vendors or journal publishers provide alert services.
  • Create a personal account with the database vendor or journal publisher.
  • Specify how you want to receive information and how often.

Is a Journal Alert Available

After searching the journals and located your title, you will see a list of sources where the journal is available.

In the example below, Academic Search Premier, MasterFILE Premier, and the Professional Development Collection include current issues and provide journal alerts.  The second LexisNexis link also provides current coverage, but does not provide an alert service.

  • JStor provides altering services, but does not contain current journal articles.
  • The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) does not offer a alerting service, but contains some journals that have this option (depending upon the journal title).

Using JournalTOCs

JournalTOCs is a free collection of scholarly table of contents.  Coverage includes over 17,859 journals (with 3,231 open access journals).

To subscribe to a journal TOC feed:

  • Search the JournalTOCs website
  • Locate and select your journal title
  • Once you are viewing the journal information, select the RSS icon
  • Subscribe to your feed using your desired feed reader