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Beyond Deakin: Supporting you into the future

Keeping up-to-date 

Remaining current with information in your area of practice is key to your workplace success. Learn to use social media, database search alerts, and other information feeds to keep up-to-date with developments in your industry.

Current awareness

Keeping up-to-date with work related information (such as changing research, new policies, debates, or health news) is known as current awareness. It's a skill that can be used for both personal and professional development.

There are numerous ways to maintain your current awareness, depending on the kinds of information you need. It can involve looking for information from a variety of sources. Current awareness can therefore be time consuming but there are ways to make this easier with digital tools.


Social media

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Social media is a powerful tool for maintaining your current awareness.

Traditional methods for communicating scholarly activity can be slow, so researchers are increasingly using social media to share and discover research. 

Social networking sites are also popular for health professionals to keep their knowledge up-to-date by providing ways to communicate about professional and social topics. Many health professionals join online communities where they can highlight relevant articles, discuss health developments, or ask for input from colleagues regarding workplace issues. 

Organisational media profiles

Some examples of Health industry organisational social media profiles: 

Tip

Many health care organisations have guidelines about how to use social media in an employment context. Make sure you check with your workplace if they have issued any policies.


Research and digital alerts

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New research is emerging all the time. Keeping up with current awareness in health practice and evidence-base can be challenging for several reasons. Busy work schedules, biased search algorithms, proliferation of research, and information scattered across various platforms and publishers are just a few obstacles you might encounter.

One way to address this problem is to set up digital alerts and to automatically receive the latest research and evidence in your field.

Database alerts

Many databases offer alert features. Usually you need to register for a free account to receive notifications. 

Search alerts can be set up that flag any new work added by a particular author. You can also set up alerts more broadly for research that matches your search criteria. This means you don't have to re-run your search and you're automatically alerted to new material when it becomes available. You can also set up citation alerts. This is a notification generated when new publications cite a particular article you're flagged as being interested in. It means you can track developing research areas in a targeted way. 

Be aware that these alerts typically provide only citation information and abstract. Unless the article is open access, the full text for an article will need to be purchased or sought through a library membership. PubMed is a database that's freely available to you after graduation. See setting up search alerts with PubMed. You can also set search alerts through Google Scholar. Google have provided tips on using email alerts.

Journal alerts

Specific journal alerts are another way you can keep up with the latest research. Many journals offer the free service of emailing you a Table of Contents (TOC) alert that flags the latest issue.

To set this up, there's usually an alerts option on the journal’s homepage. 

As with database alerts, the TOC alerts typically contain citation data but can include abstracts as well. Unless the journal or individual articles are open access, you'll need to explore options for obtaining full text. While studying at Deakin, if the Library has a subscription you'll be able to view the full text of the article.

Tip

Use your personal email not your Deakin student email so you continue to receive alerts even after you graduate from university.


 
 

Activity: Setting up search alerts

Explore the interactive below to step through setting up a PubMed database search alert and a journal site example. 


Web feeds (RSS feeds)

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RSS feeds are a web-based technology that allows users to automatically receive updates from websites, blogs, news services, and other online platforms.

These feeds are a simple way to keep up with new updates from your favourite websites without having to visit each one individually. It's like having a personalised news feed that shows you only what you're interested in. This makes them a great option for keeping up-to-date in any health practice area.

How do RSS feeds work?

  1. Subscribe: You pick and choose which websites you want updates from.

  2. Collect: A tool called an RSS reader gathers new posts and articles from those sites for you.

  3. Read: You check your RSS reader to see all the new stuff in one place.

There are multiple RSS reader options out there, so try a few to see which one you like best. To get started, Feedly is an easy-to-use option that helps you manage your RSS feeds. While Inoreader has more features for people who want more control.

Examples of RSS feeds

 

Tip

To see if a RSS feed is available look out for the RSS icon or a link to the RSS feed, it might say 'alert'. Some sites will have the RSS feed option available from their home pages but others may have it available on other pages.