Frequently Asked Questions

Embase Email Alerts

How to Set Up an Email Alert in Embase

1. Log in to Embase
   Go to Embase and make sure you're logged in with a personal Elsevier account (not just your institutional access). Create an Embase account if you don't have one already.

2. Run Your Search

   • Use Quick Search, PICO Search, or Advanced Search to enter your topic.

   • Apply any filters (date, study type, etc.) you want the alert to follow.

3. Click “Set Email Alert”

   • At the top of your search results page, click where it says “Set Email Alert.”

   • A pop-up box will appear when you click.

4. Fill Out Information in Pop-up Box

   • The pop-up box will ask you to name your search, verify your email address, as well as set the frequency at which you'd like to recieve alerts. Fill all this out to your preferences.

5. Press "Save Email Alert" to finish

To Manage or Edit Alerts Later:

1. Go to My Tools > Saved Searches & Alerts from the top menu.

2. From here, you can edit, delete, or change the frequency of your alerts.

Google Scholar Alerts

Search Alerts

Google Scholar is a search engine that specializes in searching scholarly literature and academic research. It allows you to set up alerts for new results matching your search. Alerts come out many times per week.

To set up alerts:

• Build a search that brings back results that are relevant to you - including keywords, known items, specific authors, and more.
• Click the envelope at the bottom of left column of the search screen "Create Alert."
• Select whether you'd like to receive 10 or 20 alerts per message, and specify which email you'd like to use.
  • You do not have to use a gmail account.
• You will get an email confirming that you want to set this alert.
• To unsubscribe, you may do so at the bottom of any alert email you receive.

How to get to your alerts page once you're logged into Google Scholar:

1. Go to scholar.google.com
2. In the upper left corner click on the menu, which is three lines next to "My profile"
3. Click on "Alerts"

For more information on searching Google Scholar: check out our Google for Researchers Guide on the Health Sciences Library website.

Following Author Profiles

You may set up author alerts like you set up search alerts. Additionally, you can follow authors that publish work related to your research.

To follow specific authors:

1. Go to scholar.google.com.
2. Search a keyword or an author's name.
3. If you searched an author's name, and they have an author profile, their profile will appear directly underneath the search bar.
4. If you searched a keyword, click on the menu in the upper left corner, which is three lines next to the "Google Scholar" icon.
5. Click on "Profiles" in the menu.
6. This will open a search of people with Google Scholar profiles who have identified the keyword you searched as a research interest.
7. Once you identify an author you'd like to follow, click on their profile.
8. There is a blue "Follow" icon next to their name. Clicking that takes you to a page where you can confirm what alerts you'd like to receive from them.

PubMed Alerts

Scopus Alerts

Use alerts to receive email notices when new information are added to Scopus. From the Scopus Alerts page, you can create alerts, view the latest results for an alert, edit alerts, and delete alerts. There is no limit on the number of alerts you can create. There are 3 alerts you can set in Scopus: 

• Topic Search Alerts
  • Search alerts notify you by email of new search results in Scopus that match the search in the alert.
• Author Alerts
  • Author alerts notify you by email when an author publishes new articles and receives new citations that appear in Scopus.
• Document Citation Alerts
  • Document citation alerts notify you by email of newly loaded documents that cite a document you have specified.