Post 8: My personal evolution in the search for scientific literature 🧐

I never read an article until I started my bachelor’s degree. In a lecture, I asked to the professor where I could download papers, and he replied to me: “Well, from the internet. You just look for them and that’s it”.

That was my procedure until the last semesters, when a lecture forced me to read papers for each session. That’s when I learned to search in PubMed. Before that, I mainly used library books.

One day, my advisor placed an article on the table. It had been published no more than a month ago, and moreover, it was one of those that you say, “Wow! This is useful”. He recommended that if I wanted to stay up to date, I should regularly check the pages of journals of my interest.

Later, I realized I could automate this by subscribing to the Google Scholar profiles of various scientists, whom I had by then identified as sources of innovation. Mendeley also helped me to receive emails with specific literature in my study area.

Around 2021, I created a Twitter account. This has been the most useful method for me. By following the profiles of various scientists in my areas, I am now up to date with what happens every week/day, both in terms of published papers and preprints that will be published in 6-8 months. And throughout this process, Sci-Hub and the UNAM digital library have give me access to publications behind paywalls.

Perhaps we can expect that with tools like ChatGPT, things will take a different way 🤔 So, for now, my recommendation is to create an “academic” account on Twitter to stay up to date.