Create or modify an alert

Alerts status tracker

Alerts are automated email notifications you create to deliver new content—as it becomes available in ProQuest Dialog—that matches your search.

A search results list displays when you run any of these searches in ProQuest Dialog:

Basic Search

Advanced Search

Look Up Citation

Command Line

Find Similar

An icon labeled Create alert is available as a link in these locations:

• Below the search box at the top of any search results list.
• With any search included in your recent or saved searches lists in My Research.

Click the link to define your alert details. After responding to an email from ProQuest Dialog to confirm the email address you provided, your alert is activated.

When you click the Create alert link you will be prompted to set up a My Research account if you do not have one, or log in to My Research if you do.

Create or modify an alert

Both the Create alert and Modify alert popups contain the following steps and associated fields.

Step 1—Enter delivery details

Search summary

Searched for: Reflects the search you performed. Your alerts will be based on that search.
Important to know — When you modify an alert that is based on a single search and does not have recent sets (searches) saved with it, an Edit search query link displays alongside your Searched for terms in the Modify alert popup. Click the link to display the Basic, Advanced, or Command Line search page where you created the search, with your original terms and any limiters, such as the Full text checkbox selected, shown. Change your search terms and limiters, then click Update alert to modify the search your alert is based on. Optionally click Search to see a results list first. You can then click the Update alert link on the results page to update the search.

• Databases: Reflects the databases selected when you ran your search. If your search ran against multiple databases, click the View list/Hide list link toggle to show or hide the database list. If you want the search to run against different databases, run a new search, select different databases, and create a corresponding new alert.
• Important! Saving recent sets with your search: When you combine two or more searches from your current session — for example: S1 OR S2 OR S3 — and then create an alert from that combined search, the following text will display in the Create alert layer:
  ‘Sets referenced by this search are included with the search strategy.’
  What it means is that the first, second, and third searches (sets) from your current session will be saved with your final search of S1 OR S2 OR S3. If those sets were not saved, your final search would fail and your alert would be broken. Alongside the above text in the Create alert layer, this link displays: View/select more sets. You can click this link to view all of the searches (sets) you’ve run during your current session. In addition to any sets required for your search, you can add others to save with your alert.
• Name: Enter or modify a name for your alert. The name can include alphabetic and numeric characters, as well as spaces and special characters.

Define your alert

• Send to: The email address associated with your My Research account displays here.
• Also send to: Enter one or more email addresses, separating each with a comma or semicolon.
• Subject: Enter a subject for your message. The subject will display on the Subject line of the alert email you receive. Whatever you enter will be prefaced by the placeholder ‘ProQuest Alert.’ If you do not enter a subject, ‘ProQuest Alert’ will display as the email subject.
• Email format: Select HTML (the default), or Plain text.
  Important to know — If you change your Preferred email format preference in My Research to Text only, that setting will override the default HTML setting here.

Schedule your alert

• Frequency: Specify how frequently ProQuest should run your alert. The options are:
  • Every four hours
    Important to know - When you select Every four hours, your alert will be delivered 6 times a day, approximately every 4 hours. At first you may receive two alert emails close together, as your initial alert setup email may be close to when the four hour schedule begins for your alert. 
  • Daily
    Important to know — When you select Daily, a dropdown displays, allowing you to accept the default Any, or select from six four-hour blocks, starting with 2:00AM–6:00AM. Your browser-detected time zone (EST for example) displays to the right of the dropdown. 
  • Weekly (default)
  • Monthly
  • Quarterly
• Stop after: Specify when you no longer want to receive the alert. The options are:
  • No End Date (default)
  • Two Weeks
  • One Month
  • Two Months
  • Four Months
  • Six Months
  • One Year
    Important to know — You will receive an alert renewal reminder when your alert is about to expire. The reminder email will allow you to extend the alert. The reminder also provides you with the option to delete the alert.

Step 2—Define preferences

Define your alert preferences

• Include:
  • Newly published documents only (default) — As content becomes available, your scheduled alert will deliver new articles and other content from currently published sources
  • Newly added documents, including historical items — As content becomes available, your scheduled alert will deliver articles and other content from currently published sources, as well as from historical sources that are no longer publishing.
• Display format: The selection made here determines the level of detail included for each document delivered with your alert.
  • Results listing only (default)
  • Brief citation (partial indexing)
  • Brief citation/Abstract (partial indexing, abstract)
  • Citation/Abstract (full indexing, abstract)
  • Full text  (full indexing, abstract, full text, images)
• Delivery format: Select a file format for document delivery. If you select Text, or accept HTML as the default, documents will be displayed directly in your alert email. If you select one of the other formats, your documents will be sent as an attachment—in the selected file format—with your alert email.
  • DataStar Tagged — A legacy Dialog DataStar tagged text format. ‘Tagged’ refers to abbreviated forms of standard indexed fields such as AU for ‘author.’
  • Excel
  • HTML (the default)
  • PDF — Portable Document Format. Adobe Acrobat.
  • RIS — A tagged text format for expressing bibliographic citations.
  • RTF — Rich Text Format. Supports formatting. Recognized by applications like Word.
  • Text — Plain text. No formatting such as bold characters or indented paragraphs.
  • XML — eXtensible Markup Language. Useful for manipulating and presenting—on a web page, or in a spreadsheet for example—information in exported documents or results lists differently than it displays in ProQuest Dialog.
• Show field names as: Determine how indexed field names (such as Author or Location) display when indexed information is displayed in alert emails.
  • Full (example: Author) default
  • Abbreviated (example: AU)
  • Do not show field names
• Maximum # of documents: Enter a number from 1 to 1000 to specify the maximum number of documents to be included in an alert.
  Important to know — A single alert email can deliver a maximum of 100 documents. If you specify 1000 as your maximum, and a subsequent scheduled running of your alert returns 1000 matching documents, then you will receive 10 email messages—with 100 documents each. Those 10 email messages will collectively make up your single scheduled alert.
• Message: Optionally enter a message of up to 250 characters. The message text will display in your alert email.
• Alert keywords: Optionally enter relevant words or phrases—separating each with a comma—to a maximum of 250 characters. The keywords will display in your alert email.
• Include duplicate documents: Duplicate documents can arise when the same document it returned from multiple databases. The default is No.
• Include search details: Determine whether the following information displays in your alert email:
  • Any name you gave the alert
  • Your search terms
  • Any limiters you applied
  • The databases you searched  
• Project code: Enter a project code to associate research activity costs with a particular project or client

Costs associated with creating ProQuest Dialog alerts

When you create an alert in ProQuest Dialog with one or more transactional databases selected, you will incur a monthly maintenance fee for each selected transactional database. To see what the fee is for each database:

1. Click the Change databases link in the blue bar at the top left of any ProQuest Dialog page.
2. Scroll the list to find your selected databases. Transactional databases in the list display a corresponding $ Pricing link.
3. Click the $ Pricing link to view pricing information for content and services in that database.

Creating an alert without a My Research account

When you are not signed into a My Research account:

• You can send the alert to a single email address only.
• You cannot modify the alert once you create it.
• You will receive an alert renewal reminder when your alert is about to expire. The reminder email will present you with the same options listed above, allowing you to extend the alert. The reminder also provides you with the option to delete the alert.

Important to know — If the document was found in a transactional database, you will incur a charge when you open the document.

For any document listed in your alert email:

• Click the title to open the document in ProQuest Dialog. The best available format (for example, Full text) will display.
• Listed documents may have corresponding formats—such as Brief citation or Full text—displayed beneath the title. Different formats provide varying levels of document detail.
• At the top of your alert email, click View all current results to run the search and return the most current list of results in ProQuest Dialog.
• Click Do more with documents in this alert to display the list of documents in the alert on the Selected items page in ProQuest Dialog. A prompt will display, asking whether you want to include only the alert documents on your Selected items page, or add them above any existing items you’ve added to the page while searching during your current session. The Selected tems Help topic details what you can do with document in your list. 

Managing your alerts in My Research

You can view and manage all of your alerts when you are signed into your My Research account. If you don’t have an account, check out the benefits.

Click the Alerts tab at the top of your My Research page. The Alerts page displays a single list of the alerts you’ve created. By default, your alerts are listed in the order you created them, with your newest alert listed first.

With your alerts list displayed, you can:

• Delete alerts — Using the checkbox at the top of the list, or the individual checkboxes corresponding to each alert, select one or more alerts. Then click Delete selected alerts in to permanently delete them. Alternatively, click the Delete link corresponding to a specific alert.
• Modify alerts — Click the link corresponding to a listed alert to modify the details you specified when you created it.
• Important! Modifying an alert with saved sets: When you combine two or more searches from your current session — for example: S1 OR S2 OR S3 — and then create an alert from that combined search, the following text will display in the Create alert layer:
  ‘Sets referenced by this search are included with the search strategy’
  What it means is that the first, second, and third searches (sets) from your current session will be saved with your final search of S1 OR S2 OR S3. If those sets were not saved, your final search would fail and your alert would be broken. Alongside the above text in the Create alert layer, this link displays: View/Select more sets. You can click this link to view all of the searches (sets) you’ve run during your current session. In addition to any sets required for your search, you can add others to save with your alert. On the Alerts page in My Research, the following text displays with an alert that was saved with recent sets: Search strategy contains multiple sets. Corresponding Show/Hide links let you expand and collapse the individual searches (sets) that make up the search strategy. If you click the Modify alert link for one of these alerts and then click Edit search query, the Edit Search Strategy page displays, allowing you to modify the strategy.
• View results — Use this link to retrieve a current search results list for an alert.
• Delete a specific alert — Click the Delete link corresponding to a specific alert to permanently remove it.
• Resend an alert — Click Resend/History to select from an historical list of past scheduled sent alerts. When you resend an alert, the alert will deliver the set of matching documents found when the alert was originally sent. In the event that one or more documents originally sent are no longer available in ProQuest, a message to that effect displays at the top of the resent alert.
• Extend an alert that is expiring soon — A notification displays with a listed alert that is due to expire soon. Click the extend your alert link in the notification message to select from a range of extension options—from 2 weeks, to 1 year.

• Sort your alerts - By default, your alerts are listed in the order you created them, with your newest alert listed first. Use the Sort by panel on the right to sort your alerts by:

• Date (most recent first)
• Date (oldest first)
• Alert name (A-Z)
• Alert name (Z-A)

Alerts status tracker

Click the Status tracker link from the Alerts tab in My Research to access the status tracker, a table view of your alerts in the same order shown on the Alerts tab - sorted by alert name or the date the alert was created.

The status tracker shows you when each of your alerts was last sent, and how many documents were sent at that time. You can check if your alert is active or expired, and view the recipients of your alert. In addition, you can resend your alert, and look at the history of your alert.