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Graduate Students

Resources offered by the Hoffman Family Library to support Goodwin University graduate students.
Given the volume of new publications, keeping up with the most current research in your field can be intimating and challenging. However, as a graduate student, the research of others forms the basis for your own research, so keeping abreast of new developments in your areas of research interests is an important part of preparing yourself to eventually publish your own research and contribute new knowledge to your field. The purpose of this section of the guide is to suggest potentially useful resources designed to make keeping current easier.

Keeping Current on New Research

Just as Facebook and Twitter can help you keep up with the latest events in your friends and family's lives, these scholarly networking sites
 allow you to keep track of what other researchers are publishing and working on (as well as permit others to see what you are researching 
and working on).
Contains information about tools you can use to stay current on the most recent articles and content published in the area(s)
 or discipline(s) you are interested in:
Table of Contents (TOC) Alerts

Table of Contents alerts will automatically notify you when a new issue of a particular journal has been published as well as providing you with its table of contents. This is a great way to stay up to date with the latest content from journals relevant to your particular field of research or interest.

PubMed
  • Register for a free account
  • Navigate to the advanced search page (it will say "PubMed Advanced Search Builder" at the top of the page)
  • Select "Journal" from the "All Fields" drop down menu
  • Enter keywords to find a journal of interest
  • Click Search
  • Click on "Create Alert" at the top of the page, underneath your search bar
  • Name the search, decide its schedule, the preferred format and the number of items to display
  • Click Save at the bottom of the page
  • To view your active alerts:
    • Select "My NCBI" at the top right corner of the page
    • Your alert will be listed in the "Saved Searches" box
Saved Search Alerts

Many databases allow users to save their search strings to their profiles, which prevents the user from forgetting what it exactly it was that they searched before that yielded such good results. Search string alerts take this a step further by not only saving the user's search string but also by automatically sending alerts to the user when new materials are added to the collection that would be retrieved by the string. This allows the user to always have the most up to date information about materials they are researching or are interested in.

EBSCO
  • Register for a free account
  • Create and carry out a search string
  • Click on the “Share” drop down menu on the search results page
  • Select “E-mail Alert”
  • Enter the e-mail address(es) that the alert will be sent to
  • Choose the frequency, how current the articles will be and how detailed the alert results will be
  • Save the alert​
PubMed
  • Register for a free account
  • Enter your search string in the search bar
  • Click on "Create Alert" at the top of the page, underneath your search bar
  • Name the search, decide its schedule, the preferred format and the number of items to display
  • Click Save at the bottom of the page
  • To view your active alerts:
    • Select "My NCBI" at the top right corner of the page
    • Your alert will be listed in the "Saved Searches" box