I’ve worked out the mystery from my last RSS alerts post: search alerts can be created on Ovid for Forest Science Database and GEOBASE but not for Biological Abstracts.

And I can now confirm that those RSS search alerts do in fact work (I got an alert for 58 new items including the word “properties” from the Forest Science Database this morning). So Ovid is redeemed.

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

Concluding my investigations of what alerts various engineering databases provide (part 1, part 2) with a few loose ends…

Factiva

• RSS “Editor’s Choice” average 10-15 alerts a week per ‘industry’ – the RSS link has to be manually edited if you’re using the database through a proxy server
• Email search alerts “continuously updates” – but only the account administrator is authorised!

GeoRef

• when database updated
• search alerts (contents alerts for PsycArticles journals)
• by email or RSS – but the RSS link has to be manually edited if you’re using the database through a proxy server

Ovid (eg GeoBASE, Biological Abstracts, Forest Science Database)

• weekly, fortnightly, monthly, or when database updated
• search alerts
• by email or RSS – but the RSS link has to be manually edited if you’re using the database through a proxy server
• Note: I’m not convinced this worked – my feeds are sitting happily in my RSS reader with one post each saying “Newly created Ovid feed” but I’m still waiting for any alerts to appear…

And various databases that have no RSS capabilities:

• Agricola
• CEABA
• CE Database
• FireInf
• Index New Zealand
• Kompass
• NLM
• NTIS
• Transportation Research Information Services Online

Continuing on my investigations of what alerts various (engineering) databases provide…

ACS

• daily or weekly
• contents alerts
• by email or RSS (copy and paste the URLs listed)

ASCE

• on publication
• by email: contents and topic alerts
• by RSS: search alerts – but the RSS link has to be manually edited if you’re using the database through a proxy server

Earthquake Engineering Abstracts

• when database updated
• search alerts (contents alerts for PsycArticles journals)
• by email or RSS – but the RSS link has to be manually edited if you’re using the database through a proxy server

IEEE Xplore

• on publication and you can set an expiry date
• contents alerts
• by email or RSS – but the RSS link has to be manually edited if you’re using the database through a proxy server

ProQuest

• by email: search alerts daily, weekly, monthly, or trimonthly, and you can set an expiry date and choose the subject header
• by RSS: search or contents alerts on publication; expires after 3 months “unused”; the RSS link has to be manually edited if you’re using the database through a proxy server

NZ Index

• interface and features haven’t been updated, near as I can tell, since sometime last millennium, so basically nothing

I’m continuing to wish that databases wouldn’t automatically form RSS feeds to include the ezproxy.institution.ac.nz stuff which has to be edited out by hand before the feed is any use at all. Really how hard can it be to provide an url that works out of the box?

A few months ago, a colleague and I discovered a certain database (which I shan’t name because I’ve forgotten which it was) had RSS alerts, but try as we might we couldn’t get them to work on Google Reader.

I got curious again recently – and more importantly I got time – so I sat down with a list of engineering databases and started checking them one at a time to see what kinds of search alerts they each had. My results so far:

Compendex

• weekly
• search alerts
• by email or RSS

ScienceDirect

• daily, weekly, or monthly
• search alerts, topic alerts, contents alerts, and citation alerts
• by email or RSS – but the RSS link has to be manually edited if you’re using the database through a proxy server

Scopus

• daily, weekly, or monthly
• search alerts and citation alerts
• by email or RSS – but the RSS link has to be edited as above

Web of Science

• weekly or monthly
• search alerts, contents alerts, and citation alerts
• by email or RSS – but the RSS link has to be edited

Standards New Zealand

• when a standard is updated
• email only

What’s this manual editing I’m talking about? Well, the typical rss feed from these databases looks approximately like: http://database.com.proxy.myinstitution.ac.nz/rss/lotsofgobbledygook
The proxy.myinstitution.ac.nz stuff allows me to access a database from anywhere in the world – but it requires me to authenticate when I do. Google Reader, obviously, doesn’t know my login details, so when it tries to follow that link it fails. (Sometimes it tells me it’s failed – “no feed found” – and sometimes it tells me it’s subscribed but there’s nothing on the feed itself.)

If I delete the proxy.myinstitution.ac.nz gunk, Google Reader subscribes quite happily and shows me everything on the feed. But I shouldn’t have to delete the stuff manually – the database should give me the correct feed url to start with. As Compendex does.