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Civil Engineering

Keeping Current on Your Topic – Table of Contents

About this Tutorial

Table of Contents Alerts

are a good way to keep current in your field of interest. Many publishers offer this service for free.

  • Using RSS feeds from the Publisher
    • usually don't need an account
    • copy the RSS URL into your favorite viewer
  • Using email from the Publisher
    • usually need to set up a free account
    • could contain hyperlinks to individual articles
    • could be a hyperlink to the entire new issue

Search Alerts

are a good way to keep current with literature on a topic particularly when involved in a long term project. Many of our database interfaces offer this option using RSS feeds or email when you have a free personal account

Not every article will be readily available for download when using the hyperlinks in your Table of Contents or Search Alerts. For more information, go to Finding Documents on this webpage. Not every database interface and publisher is represented on this webpage, but the idea is the same.

Table of Contents Alerts from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)

The digital library contains journals, books, standards, and conference proceedings from ASCE. The library subscribes to the journals, so the more recent journal articles are available for download from the publisher. We could have other full text articles that you find in your search, just not from the ASCE Digital Library. For more information, go to Finding Documents on this webpage.

RSS feeds or Contents Alerts (email alerts) can be found by selecting the type of user that you are (e.g. Faculty) under User Services from the menu. You will be prompted for a username and password for Content Alerts.

Table of Contents Alerts from Publishers

ScienceDirect

contains Elsevier journals on many topics. ScienceDirect provides a RSS feed and an email alert for a journal. It can be set up using the journal's homepage.

For a RSS feed, select Articles & Issues from the navigation menu and RSS from the submenu.

For an email alert, select Articles & Issues from the navigation menu and sign in to set up journal alerts from the submenu. You will be prompted for a username and password.

Wiley Online Library

contains Wiley journals on many topics as well. A RSS feed and an email alert for a journal can be set from the journal's home page.

For a RSS feed, select the RSS symbol.

For Get Contents Alerts (email alert), you will be prompted for a username and password.

SpringerLink

contains Springer journals on many topics. A RSS feed and an email alert for a journal can be set from the journal's home page on SpringerLink.

For a RSS feed, select the Most recent articles RSS hyperlink.

For email alerts, select the Sign up for alerts button and you will be prompted for a username and password.

Search Alerts from Places most people Search

Not every article will be readily available for download. For more information, go to Finding Documents on this webpage.

EBSCO

is an interface for many library databases. A RSS feed or an email alert can be set up from the Search Results screen by selecting the Share dropdown menu. A permanent URL for this search can be selected as well.

Your work is not finished if you select the RSS feed hyperlink. Be sure to go to your RSS feed within the week or it will be deleted.

After selecting email alerts, you will be prompted to sign-in. The frequency that the search is run and your email is delivered, as well as some other criteria, is configurable.

Be aware that not all journals have current issues in EBSCO. Pay attention to the Bibliographic Records date. Does it say to present?

Google Scholar

allows users to sign up for search alerts. If you have a gmail address, you can use it, but it is not required. They will send to any email. The updates are sent to you each time new items are indexed in Google Scholar...usually a few times a week.

Finding Documents

When you are Off-Campus

If you are able to download articles on campus, you will need to use the proxy server when you are off-campus. Go to a definition of a proxy server. opens new window

The easiest way is to search the UA Libraries Catalog. A search in the UA Libraries Catalog will find paper subscriptions and subscriptions that we have in databases too. Sometimes we don't buy our subscription from the publisher.

If you can download articles from the publishers website on-campus, as a short cut, you could add the proxy prefix to the URL in your Table of Contents email yourself. You would add this string,

  • http://ezproxy.uakron.edu:2048x/login?url=

to the beginning of the URL.

When you Can't Download the Article on Campus

Be sure to try the UA Libraries Catalog in case we don't purchase a subscription from the publisher. If so, we can't use their website. If the journal title is not in the UA Libraries Catalog, you will probably need to use:

When you need a Conference Paper or a Book

Try a keyword search using words in the conference title in the UA Libraries Catalog. If you can't find it in UA Libraries Catalog, try

If you can't find it in the OhioLINK Library Catalog, try interlibrary loan.