ENGL 8005: Intro to the Environmental Humanities

We are bombarded with information these days, and sometimes it's difficult to weed through all of the noise to get to the important stuff. Luckily, many journals and databases make it relatively easy to set up alerts to notify you when a journal of interest has released a new issue or when there's an article that meets your specific search criteria.  
Below I will describe a few of the options to set up journal and search alerts (there are others, ask me if you have questions!).

Some journals allow you to create an individualized alert for their content right from their publisher's website. For example, the journal Environmental Humanities allows you to create an issue alert if you're willing to create a free Duke University Press account. Once you've created an account, you can choose to receive alerts from a long list of Duke UP published journals (or just the one). You can also sign up to get alerts about new Duke UP book publications if that interests you. Other university presses offer similar options. 

BrowZine is a website (and an app) that allows users to browse through journals from different publishers. You can set up a personal account on BrowZine Web, and, if interested, can add the free BrowZine app to your iOS or Android mobile device (just search "browzine" in your preferred App Store). 

Once you have set up a free account, you can add journals to bookcases in My Bookshelf so you can easily access recent issues of your favorite journals. Under user settings, you can set email alerts so that you are notified when a new issue of a journal is published.

Not all journals will be available on BrowZine, but for those that are, this is an easy way to get notified when new issues are published.

Watch this short video to learn the basics of BrowZine: 

Another option for setting up new issue journal alerts is Current Contents Connect from Web of Science. 

Current Contents Connect provides complete tables of contents and abstracts to recent issues of scholarly journals. 

Within the database, you can either browse journal by discipline, or alphabetically (note, like BrowZine, not all journals are indexed here - ISLE (Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment) and Environmental History are, for example, but Environmental Humanities and Resilience are not). 

You will need to create a free account in Web of Science, then find the journal you want to follow. From there you can create a journal alert to be emailed each time a new issue is released. 

Current Contents Connect also allows you to create other types of alerts - a citation alert (which alerts you whenever a new publication cites a previously published work), a search alert (will alert you when a new publication matches your saved search criteria), and even an author alert.

Note: Only journals/articles indexed in web of science will be sent to you. (For example, I can create an alert for Adrienne Ghaly, but if she published in the journal Environmental Humanities, which is not currently indexed in Web of Science, you will not get that alert). 

Other database vendors also allow users to set up search alerts. EBSCO databases, for example, of which we have many, including MLA International Bibliography and Environment Complete, allow users to create search alerts with a free account. 

Find step-by-step instructions for setting up a search alert on the EBSCO Connect Discovery & Search page on How to Use Search Alerts.

If you have questions about this feature or about setting up any of the alerts, reach out to Sherri Brown for assistance.