Keeping Up with your field

[MoJingly]

I've always been curious about this. I know that science is, in part, a competition. When you choose a topic you have to be sure that it hasn't already been studied and that it is going to somehow benefit the field and your career.

I've been sitting here in lab for the past week trying to read papers and build my knowledge base. But there are SO MANY. And I feel like it will never end. How is it that researchers have the time and energy to stay in touch with all the developments/people in their fields? Especially when they are inundated with their own research responsibilities? I'm sure that once I work hard enough to get myself 'up-to-date' in my field it will be easier, but as of right now, I feel like I am climbing an impossible mountain.

Thanks for the thoughts, as always, friends!

[Xarqin]

It may be a good idea to start off by reading review papers, the more recently published the better. If you're in a scientific field, use SciFinder to find and filter your hits based on document type, publication year and language. Just spending a whole weekend reading recent reviews will give you an overview of your subtopic of interest, and get you up to speed regarding the 'state of the art'. Also, these reviews would have compiled some of the most important cross references for your further reading, saving you the time and trouble of tracking them down yourself. Once you are 'up-to-date', you'll just have to set aside an hour or so each day to skim through the latest ASAP articles that have been just released. In addition, during the course of your work, you'll also be constantly downloading specific papers as references, thus supplementing the above. (P.S. Don't forget to look out for recent monographs on your subtopic, as well as attending talks/seminars/conferences, and regularly discussing work with peers).

[theregalrenegade]

You're not alone!~

Though I'm in history, I totally understand how you feel, M. I'm constantly reading (and saving to my TBR pile) articles and reviews in my field. It does seem like a never ending and sometimes futile pursuit.

Similar to Xarqin, a couple of academic blogs suggest reading an article or review a day - take a few notes on it - then file it away. I've tried to keep to this plan, but sometimes I have to read other larger works that take over any time I had for the other stuff. I say just try to carve out 15-30 minutes first thing in the morning, or before bed, or while on the exercise bike, etc. to read over something that either sparks your interest or is relevant to new research in your field.

[MoJingly]

Thanks for the advice guys!

[UnlikelyGrad]

Most papers in my specific subfield are published in 2 journals, of which MyU subscribes to 1. (My advisor has a personal subscription to the other one and forwards any relevant papers to me.) There is another subfield that I hope to work in eventually; I asked a postdoc who works in this field in which journals he found the most cool papers. He gave me his top two (and a list of 3-4 others I could look at if I had time, which I frequently don't).

So right now I am reading 3 journals regularly (though not every paper in each journal), plus assorted papers that my advisor sends me.

[eco_env]

Most papers in my specific subfield are published in 2 journals, of which MyU subscribes to 1. (My advisor has a personal subscription to the other one and forwards any relevant papers to me.) There is another subfield that I hope to work in eventually; I asked a postdoc who works in this field in which journals he found the most cool papers. He gave me his top two (and a list of 3-4 others I could look at if I had time, which I frequently don't).

So right now I am reading 3 journals regularly (though not every paper in each journal), plus assorted papers that my advisor sends me.

I wish it was that easy in my field. I don't think most ecology journals are that sub-field specific, and some of the papers that are relevant to my interests would be in entomology journals. I've got 17 different journals listed for the papers I have in mendeley on my research subject, and that's not even a comprehensive list of the possibilities.

[newms]

I'm thinking that it's just going to take some time. After all, it takes 5 years to get the PhD - and that's just the start of a career. Something that also helps me to keep up with new stuff is twitter. I follow fellow grad students and some profs and researchers that are on there and they usually share useful links. That may be field dependent though.

[ktel]

This reminds me that there are a few societies I should join. I don't have access to most of the journals I would want, I'm assuming my department will be able to give me access in September. I find reading papers to be such a chore though, definitely not my favorite thing. So many of them are written so poorly.

[runonsentence]

I like newsm's idea of using Twitter. I've also stumbled across influential blogs in my field, which is a good way to get a sense of conversations in a more informal setting (and also, similar to review articles, as filtered someone else knowledgeable in the field who can synthesize studies/theories/findings within a broader conversation).

My university has a bit of money available to grads for attending conferences ($100/year). If you have something similar or hear of any conferences very close by that would be affordable to attend, that's another great way to get a feel for what's happening.

In all honesty, this really does get a lot easier, even after just the first year. The first conference I went to (3 months into grad school), I probably understood about 1/4 of what was being said, haha. Things are much improved now, after having finished my master's. Once you start getting a feel for your field and build a framework, you better understand how new things fit into the broader picture.

Edited August 19, 2011 by runonsentence

[MoJingly]

In all honesty, this really does get a lot easier, even after just the first year. The first conference I went to (3 months into grad school), I probably understood about 1/4 of what was being said, haha. Things are much improved now, after having finished my master's. Once you start getting a feel for your field and build a framework, you better understand how new things fit into the broader picture.

That's so good to hear! I feel like I'm listening to a different language sometimes (especially since I got my undergrad degree in music, I feel way behind!) But at least it is getting easier! Here's to working hard and having it pay off

[Eigen]

I was reading 6-7 journals for a while, although I've cut it down recently.

It's about taking a long journal table of contents, and skimming the abstracts to determine if anything is applicable to your field.

Once you're "caught up", then most journals have ASAP online publishing- it's usually only a few articles a day that hit there. You can make skimming them part of your morning routine, instead of coffee and paper it's coffee and papers!

It's also about keeping good notes on everything you read- good summaries, and a good organizational system. I've been adding somewhere around 200 papers per year to my database, and I know most of what's in there and can put my hands on it pretty quickly.

[runonsentence]

Oh, another idea I forgot: listservs! Professional listservs are great for getting a feel for your field. And then you can have celebrities emailing you all day. Celebrities.

[Eigen]

A lot of major publishers let you make custom RSS feeds as well- I know our professional organizations are really good about it.

We could select the journals we were interested in, and get RSS feeds e-mailed to us each morning with the new articles from whatever journals we selected in it. Just the abstracts, but it made it easy to read through and was a constant reminder to do it.

[MoJingly]

And Google Scholar Alert, too. If you give a few keywords, it will email you new articles every few days that might be relevant. I've gotten some that are irrelevant, but many more that are important/good to know about.

[rising_star]

I have alerts set up through several major publishers to ensure that I receive the Table of Contents (and online advance issue articles) of journals relevant to my work. My work spans several disciplines so this is actually a lot of journals. I found it pretty easy to set these things up using ScienceDirect and InformaWorld. ScienceDirect lets you get the article titles and abstracts, which is nice. I also have keyword searches in ScienceDirect that send new articles to my inbox. I'll admit, I let these alerts and TOCs languish in my inbox for days then go through them all at once. But, it's the easiest thing for me.

Also, you can be a good colleague by passing new, relevant articles along to your colleagues. I do this frequently and get many links and tips in return. The extra 30 seconds you spend forwarding an article to someone else will likely pay off in the long run.

[Genomic Repairman]

You better be setting up weekly/monthly pubmed searches based upon keywords or prominent authors in your field and subfields. I do this because it helps me to catch a lot of the science that comes out sometimes in journals that I am not looking at. I don't have time to scan the TOC of ~25 journals a week, I let the NCBI do all the hard work for me. And I get a nice email in my inbox every Monday morning with the results for each search.

[Behavioral]

Similarly, you can 'follow' academics on academia.edu and get updates when a new paper by that author is published

[eco_env]

Similarly, you can 'follow' academics on academia.edu and get updates when a new paper by that author is published

I'm not that impressed by the number of people on academia.edu. The authors I'd want to follow aren't on there.

[Behavioral]

I'm not that impressed by the number of people on academia.edu. The authors I'd want to follow aren't on there.

Luckily for me, there was a pretty strong movement towards academia.edu for my field stemming from a conference last year.

[rising_star]

You better be setting up weekly/monthly pubmed searches based upon keywords or prominent authors in your field and subfields. I do this because it helps me to catch a lot of the science that comes out sometimes in journals that I am not looking at. I don't have time to scan the TOC of ~25 journals a week, I let the NCBI do all the hard work for me. And I get a nice email in my inbox every Monday morning with the results for each search.

Two things:

1) It's highly unlikely that you'd have to read 25 TOC a week since most journals are published once a month or less frequently.

2) Searching one database may cause you to miss articles that are not indexed in that particular one.

Just two things to think about when trying to work smarter.

Also, don't forget about getting things from/to your colleagues. I pass along links to articles that I think my peers might be interested in based on their projects and they do the same for me. They may well be monitoring articles/journals/search terms that you aren't or hadn't thought of.

[Genomic Repairman]

Two things:

1) It's highly unlikely that you'd have to read 25 TOC a week since most journals are published once a month or less frequently.

2) Searching one database may cause you to miss articles that are not indexed in that particular one.

Just two things to think about when trying to work smarter.

Also, don't forget about getting things from/to your colleagues. I pass along links to articles that I think my peers might be interested in based on their projects and they do the same for me. They may well be monitoring articles/journals/search terms that you aren't or hadn't thought of.

Um more than just a few of the journals I read are published weekly (Nature, PLoS family, Science), and I use pubmed or web of science to scour for stuff that is epublished ahead of print, I don't wait for them to show up in the paper copy. The pubmed searches help you to be proactive on a topic so that you see it as soon as it epublished, which can sometimes be up to 6 months ahead of print depending upon journals. As far as searching one database for those of us in life sciences, PubMed is pretty much THE database to use. Also we do pass along interesting articles between one another, I didn't say this was the only way I searched, just a good way to cover a good amount of the literature in a short amount of time.

[Eigen]

That's why you don't scan print table of contents... You scan the ASAP list/RSS feed from the publisher.

I find the problem with setting up keyword searches is that when I'm reading for new literature/to keep up with fields, I'm more interested in new and innovative ideas that may or may not be caught by my current keyword searches.

Also, I find it exceptionally useful to be able to keep up with general directions in my field as well as advances in my subfield, which scanning ASAP articles does- I can see what people are working on in other areas without a great deal of effort.

Both work, everyone just has their preferences.

[eco_env]

I use a combination of keyword alerts and RSS feeds from a few journals. I had it easy in undergrad- I could use one keyword, get a manageable number of papers a week, and it wasn't likely that I would miss any papers I really needed to read. Now it's much harder to define my area of research with a set of keywords. I created a search with a few keywords and alternatives for each, but I don't think it's finding all the papers I should read. So I'm also skimming the RSS feeds of 8 journals- though that's probably not enough. It's hard to know what journals I should be looking at, because just about any ecology or entomology journal could have relevant papers, in addition to Nature, Science, PNAS, Bioscience... Few papers are directly related to my research, but it's good to expand my horizons a bit. I use one database- Web of Science. Any paper worth reading is likely to show up there (with the exception of my paper ). Google scholar can also do email alerts, but it tends to produce too many results.