How to Keep Up With the Literature

By Gwenyth Brockman

Published in

KnowledgeNudge

4 min readJan 4, 2017

keep up with the literature - feet on top of books. Image from https://unsplash.com/@gaellemm

Working in health services and/or the research field, you’re supposed to be an expert on your subject matter. That means you need to keep up with new peer-reviewed publications, reports, and news. But sometimes, that task can seem insurmountable.

In fact, a team of researchers actually tried to calculate how long it would take physicians to read new literature relevant to primary care. Looking at 341 journals, they estimated it would take roughly 627.5 hours a month (or 29 hours a day) to read it all — the same as 3.6 full time physicians. Further complicating the matter, that study is from 2004, and the number of articles published per year has been increasing steadily by about 3%!

So if you’re feeling overwhelmed because you can’t keep up with the literature, relax. It’s nearly impossible, unless you can convince your boss to supply you with an army of assistants who do nothing but read new articles (and that still doesn’t begin to address how the information they read is reported back to you). For the rest of us, here’s a list of methods that might make the task a little less daunting (and help a few of you stick to your New Years resolutions!).

Preface: Commit to It

Before anything else, you must consciously decide that staying up to date is important, and clear a dedicated time in your schedule to make it happen — even if it’s just once at the end of the week.

1. Literature Search Engines

The standard go-to. If you enjoy finding and reading articles on your own, you can use these medical and health-related databases to search by keyword or author to find studies relevant to your work:

2. Email Alerts

After you have searched using most of the above databases, you can then save your search and sign up for email alerts. As soon as something new is published that falls within your search terms, you will receive an email notification.

3. ToC (Table of Contents)

If there are journals that you like to regularly read or publish in, you can sign up to receive emails featuring the table of contents of each new issue. One downside compared to email alerts is that TOC updates are more general, and not specifically tailored to your search terms. On the other hand, this may encourage you to read a broader scope of articles.

4. RSS Feeds

Rich Site Summary (or Really Simple Syndication) is a way to track new posts on web pages. You can subscribe to websites, and receive updates when new content is published — look for this symbol

In order to use RSS Feeds you will need to sign up for an RSS aggregator or reader. Readers can be either web-based or installed directly on your desktop. Some of them cost money, but many are free to use.

5. Twitter

You can use Twitter to follow colleagues, researchers or other influential people who may post content that interests you. For beginners, Carolyn’s post can help get you started on using this powerful social media tool, including instructions about how to set up an account, suggestions about who to follow, and tips to help you start Tweeting. For experienced users, think reciprocally — you should post your interests for your followers too.

Some fun and less conventional ways to keep up with the literature

Start a Journal Club

Get together with colleagues on a regular basis to share and discuss new information. This could make it fun and will force you to really take the time to search for and read new articles.

Schedule a Presentation

There’s nothing like the pressure of a presentation to incentivize you to find new information on your topic. They’re also a useful tool to disseminate knowledge to, and learn from, your colleagues.

Write a Paper

To write a paper, you will definitely need a thorough literature review. But hey, who doesn’t need another publication on their CV?

About the Author

Gwenyth Brockman is a former Research Assistant with the Knowledge Translation platform at the George & Fay Yee Centre for Healthcare Innovation.