Introduction to Scholarly Communication

Current awareness is an endeavor to understand the newest trends and developments in your area of study. This can be accomplished in a number of ways.

• Journal contents: Use Browzine or an alert from a journal website to follow all published article from a particularly relevant journal. 
• Saved searches: Use disciplinary databases such as EI Engineering Village or Academic Search Premier to set search alerts. To create an alert in EI Engineering Village, run a search, then click on the link in the green box at the top that is labeled "Create Alert". You will be asked to create a personal account with the database. Once that is done, you will get email updates on new articles that match your search criteria. To create an alert in Academic Search Premier, create a personal account, run your search, and then click the RSS feed button in front of your search string. This presents you with a form that you must complete to get a daily or weekly digest email. 
• RSS Feeds: RSS or Really Simple Sindication is a commonly used tool for aggregating feeds from multiple sources. Start an account with an RSS manager such as Feedly, NewsBlur or LinkedIn Pulse. Use that account to manage feeds from a variety of individual journals or disciplinary databases. 

BrowZine: Academic Journals in a Beautiful, Browseable Format

 BrowZine is an app for Apple or Android smart phones and devices that helps you flip through the scholarly e-journals available through Purdue University Libraries. Browzine has sorted Purdue's e-journals into broad subjects and then into narrower disciplines. You can save and organize your most-used e-journals on virtual bookshelves saved to your account. The result is an easy and familiar way to browse through, read, and monitor scholarly e-journals across disciplines.

• Easily browse complete scholarly journals in a format that is optimized for tablet devices

• 24/7 Access to the information that matters to you: Create a personal bookshelf of your favorite journals

• Keep up with the latest research trends: Be alerted when new editions of journals are published.

• Share links to articles with colleagues or email a link to your lab group on the go: Easily save article information to Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley, Dropbox and other services

Browzine App for Smart Phones/Tables

1. Download the free BrowZine app by going to the app store for your device and search for "browzine."
2. Select Purdue University from the library list.
3. You will be prompted to log in with the account you created in the Browzine web app.  If you use BrowZine from off campus, you will be prompted to authenticate with your Career Account.