Getting alerts about the latest research

forestglip

forestglip

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Staff member
I wanted to make a thread with methods for finding out about new research right as it comes out.

Google Scholar
  1. You need a Google account for this. If you don't have one, you can create one from the Sign In button at the top of any Google page.
  2. When signed in, on scholar.google.com, open the navigation menu (three lines at upper left) and click "Alerts".
  3. Click "Create Alert".
  4. Type in the terms you want to track. If you want to make sure you get all results, you can also check the box for "Include less relevant results".
  5. Press "Create Alert" again. Now you'll get an email about once a day with a list of all new papers matching the search that Google is aware of (if there are any new papers).
If the search is somewhat complicated (for example, "this disease OR that disease from this journal", you can also first create a search using Advanced Search (also in the navigation menu), then press search. Then copy the text in the search bar and paste it into the textbox on the Create Alert page.

Here are some of my alerts, to give an example of the formatting:
  • "chronic fatigue syndrome"|"post exertional malaise"
    • This returns papers that mention either one of these phrases (or both).
  • author:"Apostolos P Georgopoulos" OR author:"Lisa M James"
    • This returns papers that were written by either one or the other author (or both). "|" means the same thing as OR, and you can use either method (has to be uppercase OR).
  • "gulf war illness"|"long covid"|"post acute covid"|"post acute sequelae"
    • Papers that mention any of these terms
But searches can also be simple, for example "fatigue" (with or without quotes).
More info at Google's help page for Scholar search and alerts. You can also search online for guides on other ways to use Google Scholar's advanced search. Here's one resource: Google Scholar: Advanced Search Tips

PubMed
PubMed has two options for getting alerts about new research: email and RSS.
  • For email, you'll need to create and log into a PubMed account first.
  • For RSS, you don't need an account, but you need to have an app on your phone or computer called an RSS reader. There are many free RSS readers available for download, and you can find them on app stores for smartphones.
For either option, first perform a search on PubMed. You can also do advanced searches by pressing the "Advanced" button under the search box.

Email
  1. After logging in and searching, press "Create Alert" under the search box.
  2. A form will appear where you can choose options such as how frequently you want to be alerted about new results.
  3. Once everything is correct, press Save to get emails with new research.
RSS
  1. After searching, press "Create RSS" under the search box.
  2. Increase the number of results if desired (if there are more new results at once than the number you select, you might not get alerted about all of them.)
  3. Press the big "Create RSS" button.
  4. A URL will appear in the textbox below. Press the "Copy" button, and paste it into your RSS reader app. Instructions will vary for different apps. I use an app called Feeder (Android only), but there are many others. You will then get alerts on your device about new results.

MedRxiv
  1. For preprints, you can get alerts from MedRxiv by clicking Alerts/RSS at the top of the page.
  2. Enter an email address if prompted.
  3. In the Add New Alerts section, click "Add a new Keyword/Author Alert", add a name for the alert and enter the search terms, then press Save. You'll be signed up to receive emails with papers that match your search.
MedRxiv has RSS, but you can't use custom searches with RSS. The RSS feeds include all papers from a chosen category (for example, Cardiovascular Medicine).

BioRxiv
BioRxiv works the same as MedRxiv, so see instructions above.

S4ME
And of course, you can get alerts when S4ME releases its weekly summary listing some of the latest research about ME/CFS and Long COVID. Those summaries are posted in the Weekly ME news in brief forum (which itself is found in the ME/CFS and Long Covid news forum).
  1. Press "Watch Forum" at the top of that weekly news forum page.
  2. Select "New Messages" (because each month's thread has multiple weekly summary messages).
  3. Choose whether to get alerts about new summaries through email or through the in-forum alerts (or both)
  4. Press "Watch Forum".
 
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A few other tips:

1) EuropePMC has support for boolean-style searches, email alerts & RSS and often includes preprints & papers from journals not indexed by MEDLINE/PubMed. Here's an example of a boolean-style EuropePMC search for ME/CFS, Long COVID & POTS.

2) You can also search ScienceDirect; this tends to index papers from Elsevier journals before they appear in PubMed etc. There is a limited email search alert function.

3) You can look up ongoing clinical trials in registries such as ISRCTN (UK based), ClinicalTrials.gov, and WHO ICTRP.

4) There are services like Stork that also support email alerts and allow some degree of free usage.

5) Some academic publishers also have their own email search alert services, including OUP, Sage and Taylor & Francis.
 
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