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:
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.
@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.
