KEEPING UP TO DATE WITH YOUR RESEARCH RESEARCH SKILLS

RESEARCH SKILLS
KEEPING UP TO DATE WITH YOUR RESEARCH
An alerting service enables you to keep up to date with the latest research and
literature in your field of study. An alerting service saves you time as it eliminates
the need to re-do searches regularly. The terminology for alerts varies. They may be
called alerts, e-mail updates, create profile, register, my account, auto alert,
favourites or RSS feeds. More information about the alerting service is usually given
when you click on the term.
Managing your alerts
Some of your alerts will be required for a short time only, eg. while writing an
assignment or conference paper, but others may be required for a much longer
time, eg. updating a course you are teaching or research for a post-graduate
degree. It is therefore important to know how to delete or edit your alerts, how to
keep track of your alerts in a management file and how to unsubscribe from the
service. This is particularly pertinent for RSS feeds as they generally fill up your inbox very quickly and prevent any other messages from being sent or received.
Types of alert
RSS Feeds (Real Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary)
RSS is technology that allows content or headlines from a blog and other changing
web pages eg. news sites, newsletters, journals, podcasts, publishers’ homepages,
subject databases, etc, to be viewed in a software application called a feed reader
or aggregator. Other names for RSS feeds are Web feeds, XML feeds, RSS
channels, and syndicated content.
UNISA LIBRARY University of South Africa © 2011
RESEARCH SKILLS
Links are given to the full article, news item or whatever you are monitoring. RSS is
an excellent way of distributing regularly updated content without having to go to all
the individual sites that interest you.
Numerous readers are available and you should choose the one that suits you best.
Examples include
Microsoft Outlook
Google reader (http://www.google.com/reader/view/)
To set up a RSS feed, first subscribe to your chosen RSS feed. Look out for this
standard icon
reader.
. Right-click on the icon and copy and paste it into your RSS
Journal tables of content (TOC)
A TOC alert tells you when new issues of your chosen journals are available. It is
one of the best ways of keeping up to date with the latest articles, current research
and publishing trends in your field. The TOC is often published before the journal is
generally accessible to subscribers. TOCs can be set up from publishers’ websites,
subject databases, Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory and the Unisa Library’s e-Journal
Finder.
RefAware
RefAware (http://0-refaware.com.oasis.unisa.ac.za) is a web-based current
awareness service designed to provide researchers and other members of the
academic community with immediate access to new research and publications in
their field – all within hours of being posted online.
UNISA LIBRARY University of South Africa © 2011
RESEARCH SKILLS
Providing one source for a variety of research data, RefAware constantly scans the
Internet for the latest information and automatically delivers newly-found data. By
harnessing the speed and accessibility of the Internet, RefAware provides a
comprehensive, up-to-the-minute picture of today’s global research and includes the
following subject areas
Arts & Humanities
Business
Engineering
Life Sciences, Biology and Medicine
Physical Sciences
Social Sciences
RefAware's source coverage search
window (http://www.refaware.com/journalcoverage.aspx) enables you to confirm
whether a journal title is covered in this resource.
RefAware is a registered trademark of RefWorks to which the Unisa Library
subscribes.
Subject databases
Most of the subject databases the Unisa library subscribes to allow you to set up
free alerts to new content via e-mail or RSS feeds. Please remember that you
should choose the e-mail option if you have off-campus access to the library. You
may use the RSS option if you are on the campus.
The alerts may take the form of
Table of Contents: these are generated and delivered each time a new issue of
an individual publication is available
Saved Search Alerts: the database will periodically re-run your search and send
you new material
Topic Alerts: the database will automatically send you new articles on preselected topics
Citation Alerts: informs you every time a selected document or author is
subsequently cited in the same database
UNISA LIBRARY University of South Africa © 2011
RESEARCH SKILLS
Mailing lists and newsgroups
Mailing lists are e-mail based discussion groups. By joining a mailing list, you are
automatically connected to like-minded colleagues and you are also kept up to date
with current thinking and research in your field. Since some mailing lists are very
active and you might find the volume of material overwhelming, it is important to
select your mailing lists very carefully. Most of them have an archive so you can
check on the quality of the information and the number of messages that are sent
out before you sign up. Remember that some mailing lists allow you to receive your
messages in a daily digest instead of individually, which allows you to manage the
information better.
An example of a general mailing list is the Scout Report. Published every Friday
both on the web and by e-mail, it provides a fast, convenient way to stay informed of
valuable resources on the Internet.
An example of a mailing list for the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences is H-Net
Online.
Newsgroups also keep you up-to-date and bring like-minded people together. They
can be formed around any number of topics or professional interests, eg. Google
groups. You can send and receive messages, but you access the newsgroup’s files
UNISA LIBRARY University of South Africa © 2011
RESEARCH SKILLS
Blogs
Blogs can be defined as online diaries which offer an instant publishing forum
allowing you to disseminate information to lots of people at one time. Some blogs
also have RSS feeds so you can keep up-to-date with your favourite
bloggers. Blogdigger and Amatomu (for South African blogs) are useful blog-specific
search engines, but bear in mind that a blog’s content can be as varied as the
people writing them so you need to investigate each blog before you sign up.
Important criteria to look for include how often it is updated, what the source of the
information is and how objective it is.
Professional bodies and societies
These are useful for information concerning your field, eg. news of forthcoming
conferences, journals, newsletters and other in-house publications. Professional
organisations often have student rates if you need to subscribe in order to have
access to this information.
Unisa Library new books list on the library catalogue
All new material in any format which has been accessioned in the last month will be
listed in Find new books on the library’s homepage (http://oasis.unisa.ac.za/ftlist).
UNISA LIBRARY University of South Africa © 2011