A few things I missed the first time around:

1. Ovid:
   • has Contents alerts which work immediately.
   • I went in again this evening to try to create an RSS search alert which might actually send me results (“trees” perhaps not being general enough and “effects” apparently being a stop word, I thought I might try “properties”), and couldn’t find my way back to create a search alert at all. So I went back to the instructions I’d written for our postgrads on how to do it… and discovered that the RSS button isn’t now where it was two days ago. I have screenshots so I know I’m not going mad:
     Before:
     
     After:
     
     
     Yes, I’ve tried both logged in and logged out.

2. ProQuest:
   • I commented on Tame The Web that I hadn’t received any alerts yet from ProQuest; I now have.

3. Scitation provides alerts:
   • on addition to the database
   • search alerts
   • by RSS – but the RSS link has to be manually edited if you’re using the database through a proxy server

4. Standards New Zealand:
   • also has Topic alerts