Legal Research

Google Scholar Alerts

By Simon Fodden

The new Google Scholar Blog announces that it’s now possible to get email alerts when material that matches your query is added to the index. Full instructions are given on the page linked to above; but here I’ll reprise a paragraph from that page, broken down into steps and using a search for a legally relevant matter as an example (i.e. with the “legal opinions and journals” option selected). Click on the green links to see a cropped screenshot of the results and the blue links to see the actual results in a new window.

1. To create an alert for a query, just do a search on Google Scholar as usual (e.g., [punitive damages] [punitive damages]) and
2. click on the envelope icon which appears at the top of the search results.
3. This will take you to a page with recent results for your query and alert options (e.g., alert options for [punitive damages] [punitive damages]).
   {Note that automatically Google brings you only the most recent results, i.e. those for 2010.}
4. If the query returns results other than ones you were looking for, you can tweak it right there and view updated results. Adding more specific search terms often works, and so does placing full author names and multi-word concepts in quotes (e.g., [?punitive damages? OR "exemplary damages"] [?punitive damages? OR "exemplary damages"]).
   {I haven’t found a way to isolate only journal articles, i.e. to exclude judgments; if you know how, please share via a comment.}
5. Then, click on ?Create alert? – and bingo! If you?re logged into Gmail, your alert will be created right away. If you?re not logged in, you?ll need to enter your email address and we?ll send you a verification message with links to confirm or cancel the alert.
6. Any email address will do, you don?t need a Gmail account to receive Google Scholar Alerts. Once you click on the confirmation link, your alert will be created and you?ll start receiving email updates on your query.

You can set alerts for mentions of an author or of a particular paper (instructions on the Scholar Blog page). Google is updating the Scholar index twice a week, with plans to increase the frequency.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on June 21, 2010 (boomark / email).