Keeping up on the journals
As scientists, we have to keep up with new research coming out and follow the journals. We all have our preferred way of doing so though. Sporadic searches on Pubmed are one way, or weekly email updates on specific search terms (also offered by Pubmed) are another. Alternatively, there’s Hubmed for RSS of Pubmed updates, and many more options besides.
Using search terms narrows your attention however, so I prefer simply browsing around my favorite journals online. I get a broader sampling of current research that way - which may not be of concern for the average scientist, but for a blogger, it’s often more productive for finding topics to blog on in the peer-review literature.
Some of my favorite journals, below the fold (feel free to add to the list in the comments!):
Science and Nature, as the obvious two.
Unfortunately, while these are great journals, they’re not all Open Access. Of those listed, only PLoS Biology and Nucleic Acids Research are OA, which is troubling. All of those great articles, locked away from all those without an institutional subscription (or $30 per article).
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Dan Rhoads
Dan is an American working in industry in a small Mediterranean country. He has a BSc in Molecular Biology and a PhD in Cancer Pharmacology and Biochemistry.
December 14th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
Wow, I hadn’t heard of Hubmed. Very elegant. Have you seen that you can get RSS feeds from Pubmed also? It’s definitely harder to set up, but the links bring you directly to the Pubmed article page.
December 18th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
Yeah, Hubmed is nice and clean, and I use the batch citation matcher often, because it’s so much easier to use with a cut and paste list than NCBI’s.
The guy behind it, Alf Eaton, is now working at Nature, on Scintilla.
January 2nd, 2008 at 12:23 pm
[...] to sites that don’t really contribute to my knowledge and take up Dan’s suggestion to use Hubmed to focus and streamline my literature coverage. I am also thinking about learning to [...]
August 13th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
[...] about ways to use technology to help you with the vital job of keeping up with the literature (see here and here). Now here is another one to add to the [...]