Living Reviews Guide

Automating Reviews with Literature Alerts

Keep your reviews up-to-date automatically. Set up alerts that search PubMed and other registries periodically and notify you of new relevant matches.

Why Use Literature Alerts?

Systematic reviews are traditionally static documents that become outdated quickly. A "Living Systematic Review" solves this by continuously searching for and incorporating new evidence. Lumina's Literature Alerts automate this entire workflow.

Key Benefits:

  • Zero manual effort: Lumina runs your search queries automatically in the background.
  • AI Filtering: New papers are automatically ranked by relevance against your existing project inclusion criteria.
  • Instant Notifications: Receive email digests or dashboard alerts only when papers meet your relevance thresholds.

How to Create and Configure Alerts

Option A: Link to an Existing Project

If you have an active project screening papers, you can attach an alert directly. This runs the original database search query automatically every week or month.

  1. 1. Go to your project page.
  2. 2. Select the "Alerts" tab.
  3. 3. Click "Create Alert".
  4. 4. Select frequency (weekly or monthly) and define your email preferences.

Option B: Standalone Search Alerts

You can also monitor search queries without setting up a full review project. Standalone alerts send you raw search matches matching your query keywords directly.

  1. 1. Navigate to "Alerts" from the top navigation bar.
  2. 2. Click "New Standalone Alert".
  3. 3. Enter your database query string (e.g., standard PubMed Boolean queries).
  4. 4. Save the alert.

Managing and Toggling Alerts

Lumina offers granular control over your alerts database. You can pause or modify them at any time to avoid notification fatigue.

Alert Center Control Panel

In the global Alerts Dashboard, you will see a list of all active subscriptions. Use the toggles to pause scans during pauses in your research schedule.

Alert Query / Project Active
"long covid" AND rehabilitation PubMed • Weekly
Systematic Review Project #14 OpenAlex • Monthly