Getting Table of Contents Alerts from Journals

Do you have a couple of journals that you read regularly? Or would you just like to keep up with what is being published in select journals? It is very easy to set up Table of Content (ToC) alerts in the Web of Science, and get an email when a new issue is published.

Basically, you set up a ToC alert the same way you do an alert for a search strategy. The only tricky part is to make sure you get the journal title exactly right because the Web of Science is unforgiving of misspellings and doesn't do abbreviations at all.

You will save time if you first log in to your WoS account. Then enter the full title of the journal in the Publication Name search box from the drop-down next to the search box. Do not use abbreviations of any kind. For example, the journal everyone knows as PNAS is the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

What if you are not sure of the exact title? Then click on the yellow Select a Database tab along the top and click on Journal Citation Reports (JCR) in the right hand column. You can also find it from the yellow Additional Resources tab; from Analytical Tools on the left click on Journal Citation Reports (JCR)

Although it has other uses, you can also use the JCR to find the names of journals by clicking on View All Journals under Select an Option on the right. Click Submit, and you will get a very long list of journals sorted alphabetically by default. Find the one you want, copy and paste the entire title into the Web of Science Publication Name field, and search. (Caution: be sure to scroll down to select the Timespan that is relevant for your journal. If it is a monthly publication and Latest Week is selected, you may get no results.)

Once you have set up your Publication search, go to Saved History at the top and click the box for the result set you want. Then click the Save History / Create Alert icon, set up the alert parameters you want, then click Save.