With a search history, organizing, comparing and editing previous searches can be done quickly and easily. In practice, the search history lists all searches run during one session, so a user can easily return to the results of previous searches or edit them. A search in search history can also be saved and set as the target of your automatic current awareness alerts. That way you will be automatically kept up-to-date when new articles related to your subject are added to the database.
A search history frequently allows the combining previous searches. It is often sensible to first run searches in small stages so that the number of documents related to different sections of the subject can be seen in the database. Below you see an example of search history and of combining previous searches in Scopus.
It is likely that articles and books relevant to your research topic will be published after the first successful search. It is therefore good to save the search and to manually run it again in regular intervals in the database.
Most databases and services offer the possibility of setting up an automated alert when new documents match your search string. The search string will be performed regularly in the database, and any new match will be sent to the subscriber by email. Many databases require registration if you want to create alerts or save searches.
In addition to search alert on specific topic it is possible in some databases to set a citation alert. It will let you know, when a certain article in the database has been cited. A journal alert can be set on a publisher website and it will inform you whenever a new journal issue is published.
Below you see an example of setting a search alert in Scopus.
