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Literature Reviews: Using Library Resources in Writing

Monitoring the Literature

After you conclude your initial literature review,  monitor new literature as you continue to research and write  about your topic.

Bibliographic databases

For this purpose, see the documentation for bibliographic databases or journals to see if they enable alerts of 

  • new citations to a piece of literature
  • new literature in a given subject or by specific author(s)
  • table of contents for new issues of a journal.

Preprint alerts

Also, if you want to monitor preprints, see if preprint server(s) in your subject enable alerts. Example.

If a preprint server does not have an email alert for new content, consider setting up Google Scholar alerts.

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Social media

For an analysis of social media as a vehicle for learning about new scientific discoveries, see The Science People See on Social Media (Pew Research Center, 2018)