They’re Here! E-Mail Alerts for Google Scholar Now Available Direct from Google

Until now, Google Scholar users had to use a variety of methods to create alerts to notify them of new content in Google Scholar. Well, the wait is over and as of this weekend, Google Scholar E-Mail Alerts are now available. It’s Google, of course they’re free.

NOTE: This post was update at 10 P.M. on Tuesday, May 11, 2010 after ResourceShelf chatted with Anurag Acharya, the founding engineer of Google Scholar.

Creating Alerts

1. For a “simple” alert, just run a Google Scholar search, click the search button, and get your results.

2. Click the “Envelope” icon (top left side of the page). Here, you can make changes, if needed, click “update” button and a sample of results using 2010 results with the modified search query appear below. When you’re set after deciding the amount you want returned, click “Create Alert.” You’re then taken to your page of “Google Scholar” Alert page. If you want to modify the alert at this point, you’ll need to click the cancel button and begin again.

3. Alerts appear to work with all three content options:
A) “Traditional” Google Scholar Content (with patents or without patents)
B) Legal Documents and Journals

4. For advanced Google searchers, most advanced syntax should also work in Google Scholar. The same goes for legal materials and patents. However, date limits do not work. We’re still trying to figure out a search limiting to only patent applications or awarded patents.

However, if you or those you’re working with aren’t syntax users or just want to try something different, Google Scholar alerts created by using a more complex query can also be created using the advanced search interface.

Because alerts are to find new material (independent of publication date) that has just “entered” the database, the date range limits do not work.

You can’t create an alert for only a source (at least at this time. For example, only send alerts for new entries from “The Journal of X” a no go. Anurag Acharya told us that part of the challenge in offering this feature is that Google is that a “large portion” of the Google Scholar database is built by crawling the open web and, “automated identification of articles and extraction of metadata.” Of course, others have written about major issues they have with metadata and automated identification particularly when it comes to using Google Scholar as a tool for citation counts.

5) Alerts limited by an authors name or part of a name and prebuilt “collections” (look for them on the advanced search page) appear to work correctly. Btw, Google Scholar names (with or without an alert) do not have to be inverted and as an example, these are all variants of the same name: “m cutts’” or “matt cutts” or “matthew cutts.” However, if you do get a significant number of false drops due to name issues, it’s probably time to build a new query.

6) One of the great Google info blogs is Google Operating System. There we read that Google Scholar alerts will do automatic query modification.

Google Scholar’s email alerts feature is special because Google changes your to get better results (for example, [statistical speech recognition] has been changed to [statistical intitle:"speech recognition"])
Read the full discussion here: http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/05/10/there-here-e-mail-alerts-for-google-scholar-now-available-direct-from-google/

Sources: Google, Garrett Eastman, Google Operating System, and A Computer Scientist in a Business School