Gill

The alert works on the saved search its based on. It carries out the search on the specified database(s), step-by-step until it reaches the final step and produces results. If your search strategy is accurate, you should receive alerts when a citation is added to the appropriate database. If your search covers multiple databases, the search will be run on each individual database and you might get eg 3 emails for the same alert run on different databases.

If you tick the box to “include search strategy” you will get your emails regularly, even if there are no new citations.

Things to check are:

·           That your search strategy will actually pull up the info you are wanting. Eg if using key words have you misspelled a word.

·           That you haven’t included date limits in your original search strategy. This might mean that nothing is picked up after, say 2010.

·           That you have set your alerts to be run at the intervals you want them (weekly, monthly, etc).

·           That you haven’t limited your search to some obscure language by mistake.

·           That you have set the strategy to search appropriate databases.

·           That you have given an accurate email address.

·           Your spam filter which may view the alert as computer-generated and block it.

 

I apologise if some of the above options seem a little basic, but they are all things I have encountered in the past when troubleshooting the non-appearance of alerts with users.

Hope this helps.

 

Can anyone tell me how an email alert set up on a literature search actually works?

I was looking back at an old search I had set an alert on and found there were some 2011 articles now being returned  for which I never received an alert.

Which line or lines in a search are looked at by the alert?

it can't be every line of the search as common terms would be producing alerts every week - is it the bottom line of a search?  In which case I assume you need to save the bottom line of each database searched as a subset with a individual alert?  I checked the online help but can't find any further info.

Thanks

Gill

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