JournalTOCs is a tool which you can use to set up email alerts for new issues of specific journals. This site currently contains Tables of Contents for just over 36,000 titles, including nearly 18,000 Open Access publications.
Many of the databases to which the Library subscribes have alert services enabling you to receive an email when new items matching your keywords become available. It is usually necessary to set up a (free) personal sign-in, additional to your London Met login, before setting up an alert. This can be a good way of helping yourself to maintain an awareness of what new research is being published in your area of interest or as an initial scoping exercise for your research topic.
Ebsco collection of databases includes the following:
Full-text access to thousands of journals across a broad range of topics. Contains also summaries to articles which are available fulltext via other databases.
Contains full text journals plus summaries to some articles available full text elsewhere and market research data. Subjects covered are accounting, banking, business, economics, finance, management, sales & marketing, logistics & transport. Contains full text of the Harvard Business Review from 1922. Datamonitor, Gartner and others provide market research, industry reports and company reports & SWOT analysis. The Economist Intelligence Unit provides some country reports.
Links to full text for many journal articles. This database also contains indexes and summaries for articles from over 400 journals in the field of communications and mass media, including radio, television and journalism.
A bibliographic and full text database which covers scholarly research on all levels of education from early childhood to higher education, and all educational specialities, such as multilingual education, health education and testing. ERC also covers areas of curriculum instruction as well as administration, policy, funding and related social issues.
Covers all aspects of human impact to the environment, including content on global warming, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more. The database provides indexing and abstracts for more than 384,000 records, as well as Open Access full text for more than 4,700 records.
Journal article abstract database focused on psychology, social science and behavioural sciences. Covers approximately 2,400 journals in multiple languages.
and more.......
You can search more than one Ebsco database collection at the same time. It is especially useful if your area of research crosses over to other subject areas. Ebsco can also display abstracts of articles available on other databases such as Science Direct, Wiley, Taylor & Francis and other library holdings by referring you back to the Library Catalogue. For this reason it is useful to set up specific search alerts and your chosen results can be saved to your folder. Note: you will need to set up your own login and Id to access your folders on Ebsco. See the Help area on Academic Search Complete or any other Ebsco collection.
Google Scholar also offers alerting options for new citations. The one-minute video below demonstrates how to set this up.
RSS feeds allow you to see new content updates on websites without needing to go to the website itself. Most internet browsers have an RSS extension which can be installed, or you can use a RSS reader such as Feedly.
With the the growth of social media, RSS feeds may not be as popular as they were a few years ago, but they can still be a helpful way to keep an eye on updates to webpages of interest.
Social media isn't just for selfies and photographs of your dinner; it can be a valuable tool for connecting with researchers and academics in your area of interest. Many are active on Twitter and/or have personal blogs where they will share details of what they are working on and other items being published in that area. If you're an active user yourself then Twitter in particular can provide a platform on which to make connections and become part of an online community of researchers (as always, do be conscious of how you present yourself and what you say on social media; once something is out there on the web, it is very difficult to make it go away).
