Keeping up with medical literature is becoming more and more of a difficult task. and for clinicians, you'r not going to be able to read every single publication in your field. but you need to have a way to keep updated on the latest important publications without getting overwhelmed.
There are many sources on where to find journals and articles related to your field. It will really depend on your speciality, and probably you won't have an issue getting the information, since we are over flooded with information. but the Main point I want to focus on here ,, is how to manage this information over load, in the most effective and efficient way.
You can think of this information flooding you in two ways:
Information that is pushed to you .. so you don't have to manually fetch papers from every journal you subscribed to.
Information that you want to pull where you have randomly stumbled on an interesting article and you want to save it aside to read it later.
Lets start with the content pushed to you:
Using an RSS feed aggregator you can easily fetch your favorite journals, websites regularly and get notified as soon as your favorite website is updated, and find all your favorite content in one place.
the key here is to choose your sources wisely. If you added every single journal or website to your feed, then you will end up overwhelmed and drowning again in information overload, which we are trying to avoid here without missing important updates.
Resist the urge that you must read every single one of them. The best way to be efficient, after personally curating your most important resources, is to learn to frequently skim and go through them. Decide if this article or paper is useful for you where you might want to read later, or save it. if not, there is really no point of keeping it, just in case. Chances are you will not never get back to it again.
There are many apps for RSS feed reader. you can look around and choose the one thats suitable for your personal preference. I have been using Feedly for so many years. I just got used to it and it provides everything I need. plus they recently I learned an extra helpful tip to help me control my email inbox. ( I'll save this tip to the end of this article, since its not related to this topic).
In Feedly, you can create folders for different topics, tag content, favorite and annotate within the reader. The reader as well have this simplistic look to it, which makes it much comfortable to focus on what you are reading without all the noise and distracting colors and ads usually found on websites.
another equally good RSS feed app is inoreader, you can check it out as well.
How Feedly will show your favorite content in one place.
now on how do you pull content that you like?
this is content that's not on your commonly visited feed. a link of an article someone sent to you. an email you received you think is interesting and want to save to read later. This is content you want to fetch it manually and keep it to read later.
Services that provide this are conveniently named read it later apps.
Many people confuse the two kinds of apps with RSS feeds aggregators. They are similar in away but very different in what they provide.
You can't automatically fetch content to your read later app. you manually add interesting articles as you go. its sort of a bookmarking service.
They are very useful and powerful once you personalize your use of them. Similar to the RSS feeds, they have this minimalistic reader to focus on reading your content without the colors and logos etc.
The famous 2 are instapaper and pocket:
They make it very convenient to clip any website or email content you want to save to read later, they all have a web-clipper extensions, and email clipper and lets say you are using a different device at your work, where the clipper is not available, you can just send the content to an email dedicated for you .. and you'll find your content in your reader ready when ever you have few minutes to read.
You technically don't need to use those services, it's more or less sort of a bookmarking or the Reading list (available in safari). but the convenience they provide, delightful neat reading experience are all worth investing in them.
in Instapaper, you can also save, annotate, tag, and create categories for your content. So I find it very useful to have a one place to go and be sure to find interesting articles when ever I have few minutes to spare for reading, instead of wasting few minutes finding my bookmarks etc.
It's also easy to go back to since it's saved there. if you categories and tag your content. ( I mostly export the important content to my evernote)
There are many ways really to fetch your favorite journals content periodically. You can set your personal workflow based on your needs and how easy to find, curate and save them.
you can also set up your pubmed or google scholar to regularly send updated content based on how you set it up and your favorite keywords etc.
you can find a quick overview on how to set up your pubmed alerts
One of my favorites which I use frequently is Read by QxMD.
it get feeds of the medical journals of your choosing, and you can link it to your institution account to get access with one click to the full text articles if your library is subscribed to.
Of course you can tweak your workflow for your personal preference, there are endless ways to do this. I sometimes email or clip content directly to my evernote dedicated inbox. I also use Devonthink Reading list at times. feel free to do what ever makes you happy.
but Why I use RSS feeds and Read later apps in my workflow is because I find it more efficient to segregate inbox to read ( captured content ) from my saved personal knowledge management. I do prefer to process them in between to be mindful of what I am keeping and if I really want to keep it. Plus I get to really think of my tags, where it will go, and how will my future self find this content. This awareness usually helps to keep the clutter to the minimal.
Remember, cluttered inbox equals cluttered mind. Be mindful of your curation.
*one very useful feature in Feedly (in the Pro+) is that you can generate a dedicated feedly email to subscribe to any newsletter and add it to your feed.
By doing this you don't ever need to subscribe using your own email to any newsletter, but still subscribe to newsletters you might want to keep, but without cluttering your email inbox.
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