Help: E-Mail Alerting

E-mail alerting is available from User Options and from every Web page within Electronic Journals by selecting the 'Alerts' tab in the top right-hand corner. We have altered our alerting service to make it even easier for you to set up alerts (* see below).

To take advantage of this option, you need to log in. If you do not already have a username and password for our Electronic Journals service, please create an account.

E-mail alerting is designed to keep you up-to-date with the publication of new articles within your chosen subject area. Whenever a new article corresponding to your selection becomes available, you will automatically receive an e-mail message containing the article details.

To save you time, your e-mail alert will be delivered to you in hypertext format. If you receive and read e-mail via your Web browser, you will be able to link directly from the articles referenced in the message to the relevant Web pages. Alternatively, you may save the alert as an HTML file which you can then open and view in your Web browser at your convenience.

Two types of e-mail alert are available:

Table of Contents (TOC) alerts
Our standard TOC alerting service enables you to receive the Tables of Contents of your favourite IOP journals as soon as issues are published online. We can also send you updates on our popular journal services such as IOP Select and IOP Physics Reviews.

Enhanced alerts
Our enhanced alerting service allows you to enter more flexible alerting criteria including keywords, so that whenever articles matching your criteria are published, you automatically receive alerts containing their details.

TOC alerts

TOC alerts have three options:

Name of alert
Use this to name the profile. This field must be completed if you are defining a new profile.

Journals/EJ collections
This section lists all of the journals published by IOP Publishing and the list of EJ Collections. The Journal TOCs are e-mailed as soon as they are published online, whereas the collection e-mail alerts (e.g. IOP Physics Reviews) are e-mailed monthly.

Include article abstract in alert?
This allows you to include the abstracts within the e-mail alert. The default is for abstracts not to be included.

Maximum frequency of alerts:
When creating a new e-mail profile, you must select the frequency at which you would like to receive alerts. You can choose one of the following five options:

  • Once a day
  • Once a week
  • Once every two weeks
  • Once every four weeks
  • Suspend (this can be used to temporarily suspend the alert profile).

Enhanced alerts

Enhanced alerts provide more flexibility than the standard TOC alert:

Name of alert
Use this to name the profile. This field must be completed if you are defining a new profile.

Journals
This section lists all of the journals published by IOP Publishing.

EJ Collections
Use this option to select one or more of our EJ collections.

IOP Select
Although IOP Select is an EJ collection, we allow alerts to be set up specifically for IOP Select, and the subject areas within this collection can be specified for e-mail alerting.

Keywords
This section allows you to enter keywords to help identify articles of interest to you. Any newly released articles within the journals you have selected which match these keywords will be included in your e-mail alert message.

If you have created an alert profile from a saved search, your search criteria will be specified in Verity search language in your alert profile.

Include article abstract in alert?
You can opt to receive abstracts within the alerts you receive or the Tables of Contents entries only. Both options include links to the article(s) in our Electronic Journals service. Please note that alerts are delivered in plain text. Any HTML mark-up used, for example to denote sub and superscripts, will not be included. Any mathematics rendered as graphics will be described using alternative text (e.g. the name of the character, such as alpha). Where an entire equation is represented graphically online, [image] will be shown.

Maximum frequency of alerts:
When creating a new e-mail profile, you must select the frequency at which you would like to receive alerts. You can choose one of the following five options:

  • Once a day
  • Once a week
  • Once every two weeks
  • Once every four weeks
  • Suspend (this can be used to temporarily suspend the alert profile).

Please note that for those journals outside your institution's subscription or licensing agreement, you will receive tables of contents and abstract access only.

User details

If your e-mail address changes, you must update your user details to ensure that your e-mail alerts reach you. This section serves as a reminder of this and provides a link to the Update Your Details screen so that you can easily update or amend your e-mail address.

See also: