TriBeta Program

The Scientific Literature: Tips from Scientists 

Few aspects of scientific work may be as crucial—and yet as easy to neglect—as reading the literature. Beginning a new research project or writing a grant application can be good opportunities for extensive literature searches, but carving out time to keep abreast of newly published papers on a regular basis is often challenging. Below you will find tips from actual Scientists on how they keep up with the Scientific Literature. Remember, these are just tips, and the important point in all of this is that you have to determine the method that works best for you. Happy Reading!

• To keep on top of my specialty area, I carry out regular, systematic literature searches...
• ...subscribe to the RSS feeds of relevant journals...
• ...Monitoring the handful of main conferences in my field throughout the year, plus a couple of other relevant venues, also does a good job. Many conferences eventually publish their proceedings, and so whenever the lists of accepted papers get published, I also go through them as soon as I can and look at the papers that seem the most relevant to me....
• I rely on alerts that the journals automatically send to highlight new publications that cite papers I found of interest previously. There is also substantial activity on social media, with journals promoting and researchers discussing new articles....
• Talk to librarians! Depending on their area of expertise, they may be able to give you specific advice about accessing important papers or navigating the scientific literature. Even if they don’t have specific subject area knowledge, librarians are an often-untapped source of knowledge about how scholarly information is organized, evaluated, and disseminated.

*written by Elizebeth Pain for Science Mag.