July 9, 2018

Using alerts to keep up with new journals

HeinOnline is a favorite of many of our cardholders due to its large collection of full text journal articles. To make reading articles online even easier, HeinOnline offers a journal alert service, which will email you every time the journals you select have added a new issue. The emails include a summary of the table of contents of the latest issue added to HeinOnline.


Watch HeinOnline's training video (below) for a quick tutorial. You'll need to create your own myHein account in order to get automatic email updates when a new issue has been added to HeinOnline. Creating your own HeinOnline account (which is done AFTER you log in with your library card) is easy!


Follow these steps to set up a MyHein account and create your first journal alert

  1. Log in to HeinOnline with your library card (see our tutorial).
  2. Library computer users are logged in automatically – no card required
  3. Choose the "MyHein" link at the top
  4. Select the "Create an Account" link from the menu
  5. Make up a username, password, and fill in the rest of your information, including the email address to which you would like alerts sent.
  6. Now that you've created a MyHein account, follow these steps from HeinOnline to create and manage your journal alerts.
  7. To manage your MyHein account in the future, first login to HeinOnline using your library card number, then login to your individual MyHein account.

Embargo periods

Some journal publishers include embargo periods for their publications in HeinOnline. While the journal articles may be indexed (a summary and other information is searchable), the full text won't be available for a set period of time. When you are setting up a journal alert, you can check whether there is an embargo period, and how long it is, by checking the information link for the journal. Learn how to check a journal's publishing information in HeinOnline's quick guide.

Ask a librarian

We know that keeping up with the features in research databases can be difficult. Ask a librarian if you need help using HeinOnline, or learning more about the features you can use with a myHein account.