I did a little survey today to see what kinds of e-mail or RSS alert services Brandeis scientists (spanning the range from undergrads to faculty) use to learn about new science papers.
About half of them use an alert service. 28% use more than one service, while 20% use a single service. Of the half that don’t use alert services, most of them (42% of total) would consider doing so. Only 10% are turned off by the idea.
Of the services people use, PubMed is the most popular (hardly surprising given how life science heavy we are). Out of 232 responses so far, people said they used alert services from these suppliers:
| PubMed | 60 | 34% | |
| via BioMail | 6 | 3% | |
| via PubCrawler | 4 | 2% | |
| via HubMed | 1 | ||
| Individual journals | 45 | 25% | |
| 32 | 18% | ||
| arXiv | 14 | 8% | |
| Web of Science | 10 | 6% | |
| SciFinder | 7 | 4% | |
| Brandeis library | 5 | 3% | |
| Faculty of 1000 | 3 | 1% | |
| ResearchGate | 3 | 1% | |
| NASA Astrophysics | 1 | ||
| Annual Review | 1 | ||
| EurekAlert | 1 | ||
| HighWire Press | 1 | ||
| ScienceDirect | 1 | ||
| National Academies Press | 1 |
I’m surprised by the strong showing of individual journals and publishers — who says traditional publishing is dying?
If you need some instructions how to set up alert services, see our wiki.