Learning to Read (Efficiently)

The Gist:  Feed aggregators like GoogleReader are not just for blogs!  This can be a great way to browse primary literature and bring journal articles directly to you, all in one place.  It's a great way to stay well read and it's easy to set up.  After assisting other med students and attendings with setting up their feed aggregator with their favorite journals, I figured I'd share this video below, in the event it's useful for anyone else.


Advantages:

• Abstracts in one place
• Accessible from any smart phone, tablet, or computer.  RSS feed applications for smart phones and tablets abound and sync with GoogleReader.  For example, I use the Feeddler app (free), but there are many.

• Makes it easy to increase the exposure to primary literature by making journals "scannable"
• Note:  I do not endorse just scanning abstracts but some journals may have a lower yield of interesting or relevant articles but one can still scan the abstracts easily to detect papers that are worth checking out the full text.  
• The "Articles in Press" RSS feed option available from many journals makes the newest literature available (less wait time because there's often a good bit of lag time until the article is published in the journal).
• FOAM is eco-friendly -No paper! 

Disadvantages:

• Full text is rarely available.  Most medical school libraries/institutions have an e-journal option on the library web page.  Take advantage of this, if available.
•  If you have access to the full text through your academic institution or individual subscription, bookmark commonly visited journals in your browser.  Ex: I have an entire 'journals' folder to ease the access to full text.  This takes out those steps of searching through the library website for e-journals and reduces the number of logins required. 
• Docphin and Read by QxMD are interesting platforms for full text that an increasing number of institutions have access to.  I don't have access to these, but Keeping Up! from Vanderbilt did a review on the program.  Upside: Improved readability and seamless full text if you are with a participating institution.  Downside:  It's another app to open/go to compared with one feed for blogs, articles, etc.  

@lwestafer try Read by QxMD. You will find it opens up full text.
— a midwest er doc (@docERtrauma) January 22, 2013

• Use Evernote to save and store full-text articles for easy accessibility.  The Google Chrome browser has a free "web clipper" application available for Evernote, making it easy to save articles.  There's an Evernote application for smart phones, as well. 

Real-time feedback from Twitter demonstrated that Pocket is a platform markedly similar to Evernote  but perhaps more user-friendly. Check it out

@lwestafer great info! i use a similar setup, although i found @pocket to be a bit easier to work with than evernote - no limits + tagging
— Derek Sifford (@flightmed1) January 21, 2013

Another tip:

Add 'free full text [sb]' to your search term in Pubmed to find #FOAMed articles from journals
— Chris Nickson (@precordialthump) January 21, 2013

• Information overload.  Choose what's important or valuable for you so the process is still meaningful and not overwhelming.  Here are some excellent tips from Chris Nickson.