Staying updated with the latest research can help navigate the direction of your field and transform you into a thought leader who thinks ahead, thus contributing to more impactful research. Traditional literature review tools help you trace what’s been done, but they often lag when it comes to surfacing cutting-edge developments. Fortunately, there are powerful methods and tools that allow you to track new papers, authors, and ideas almost as they emerge. In this article, we’ll explore actionable strategies to ensure you’re always in the know, whether it’s by tracking prolific authors, monitoring research domains, or following journals and social feeds.
Learn which tools can speed up your research: This free 21-day email series introduces you to a range of academic tools and how they work together to speed up the time needed for a literature review. Most of these tools have been around for less than a few years, some use AI. Knowing them gives you an almost unfair productivity advantage for your research.
There are three ways to find emerging content: By people, by domain, or by journal. Depending on which you prefer, you will use a different tool. My favourite tool is Inoreader, as it allows me to pool many of these together and have it seamlessly run on my phone and desktop computer. Screening abstracts happens on the commute, but reading them later on the computer.
Let’s dive into the methods one by one.
1. Follow Researchers Directly via Google Scholar
If you already know who the key voices in your field are, one of the most direct methods to stay informed is to follow those researchers. The easiest way to do this is through Google Scholar. To follow an author:
- Click the Follow button, and choose whether you want alerts for:
- New articles by the author.
- New articles related to the author’s research.
- Search for the author’s name on Google Scholar.
- Navigate to their profile.
This second option—“related research”—is particularly useful, though it’s worth noting that it includes a wider thematic net and may notify you of papers beyond that author’s direct work.
You can manage your subscriptions by clicking the menu icon (☰) in the upper-left corner and selecting Alerts. Here, you can review, remove, or add new alerts as needed.
The downside of using Google Scholar is that it’s not very “personal”. It will often contain papers that are marginally connected to your research, especially in papers where this author was not the first author but merely contributed data, for example. So this method may lead to a little bit of overwhelm.
2. Track Research Domains with Litmaps
Rather than chasing every individual paper, why not monitor an entire niche of literature? Litmaps offers an elegant solution. Here’s how to do it:
- Curate a set of roughly 10–15 papers that define your research niche. Your research will, of course, consist of multiple such research niches. In my opinion, the narrower this niche is, the better, as it increases the relevance of the results and sends you less, but more relevant papers.
- Upload these to Litmaps and create a “Litmap”. (You can upload from Zotero or any other reference manager). Litmaps is a key tool of my AI Lit Review Course. Keep in mind, you can also switch Litmaps out for ResearchRabbit or another citation-search tool if you prefer.
- A Litmap contains the uploaded papers, along with the network of connected papers (through references). What we need is to monitor new papers that are tightly connected to this network (i.e. they cite similar sources and are referenced by similar sources).
- Click the Monitor button on the top right to track this citation network. You may also choose the frequency (monthly or weekly).
Whenever a new paper enters this network, you get notified. In my experience, Litmaps errs on the side of caution, sending fewer rather than more emails. However, they tend to be more relevant than Google Scholar.
3. Use Feeds to Monitor Journals with Inoreader
Keeping tabs on a handful of key journals is another strategic approach. Even if full-text access is restricted, abstracts are typically available immediately upon publication. This allows us to automate the process using Inoreader, a free and flexible RSS feed reader. (An RSS feed is just a technical way of describing a website regularly publishing new content). Here’s how to use it:
- Create an Innoreader account (and download the mobile app if you like)
- Click the “Add feed” button on the left. Then search for the journal’s name. Many journals are already accessible by title.
- If a feed isn’t provided, Inoreader can still monitor changes to the journal’s webpage and notify you. Here is how to do it manually.
- The interface displays abstracts and graphical summaries, and you can tag or save articles for later.
This setup is convenient for casual browsing during commutes or downtime. I often skim abstracts on my mobile phone and add them to my reading list. For me, this usually replaces less valuable social media with scrolling through applicable academic content.
4. Following Social Media and Substack with Inoreader
Beyond academic databases, many researchers now share their work through social channels and newsletters. This has the added advantage of being more personal and passionate. My supervisor, Jonathan Tonkin, for example, shares his opinions on biodiversity and climate change in the newsletter titled “Predirections”. Twitter (or “Academic Twitter”) used to be a central hub, but the landscape is changing. Since Elon Musk took over, many academics left. Here’s where to look instead:
- LinkedIn: Many scholars post their latest publications here.
- Substack: Blends newsletter content with a Twitter-like feed, offering more regular and personalized updates from scholars.
- BlueSky and Mastodon: Alternatives to Twitter/X where academics are increasingly active.
To avoid hanging out on social media too much, you can add the relevant newsletters and social media accounts to Inoreader as well.
You will avoid any ads and distractions by curating your personal feed on Inoreader.
5. Explore Semi-Academic Platforms for Broader Insights
Sometimes, the most valuable context comes from essays or digests interpreting research for a broader audience. Two standout platforms include:
- Aeon: Publishes long-form essays on academic topics written for the public.
- GrowKudos: Researchers explain the significance of their studies in accessible language, often adding personal notes about the motivation or implications of their work.
These platforms are ideal when you’re looking to connect academic insight with real-world narratives or interdisciplinary contexts.
Make It a Habit: Weekly Reading and Sharing
If you’re serious about staying updated, make it a personal challenge to share insights from one recent paper to someone. This can be on social media, your lab group, or your personal blog. This habit not only helps you digest new material but also builds your academic profile. Others benefit from your summaries, and you become a known figure in your niche.
How to keep up with so much scientific literature?
Being overwhelmed by too many papers is absolutely normal. And indeed, many of them will contain some helpful information for you. In my literature review course, I presented a tool that can help with reading papers in bulk: SciScummary. An alternative might be Notebook LM or a ChatGPT Project to extract insights from papers you are not 100% invested in. You can learn all about these and dozens of other tools in the lit review course.
8. AI Option: Use AI Tools Like RDiscovery
For those who prefer a more mobile or AI-driven workflow, RDiscovery offers a premium experience. As. it will find papers for you based on your previous reading, tags, and using AI. In my opinion, AI, at the moment, can’t match the precision you get from following people and citation networks. However, the main benefits of using AI tools are in the way you consume the content it finds. For example, you can:
- Chat with PDFs.
- Translate papers.
- Generate audio summaries. (Also possible for multiple papers for free with Notebook LM)
AI can accelerate your screening process, though it’s no substitute for deep reading.
Summary: What’s the best way to “follow” academic research?
By far, my favourite way of keeping up with the research is using InoReader to pool together social media feeds from academics and journals (I want to eventually publish in). Reading newsletters of passionate academics (quite common in Ecology!) helps to put my research into perspective and helps me look beyond my area of expertise. For practical reasons, I also set up a few notifications on domains with Litmaps that trickle papers in over time and sometimes surprise me in my inbox.
