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I am a new researcher in immunology and biology. I am unable to keep track of so many papers being published in journals. Do I need to check Conference Proceedings as well? I am not sure what to follow and what to not follow .

Sursula
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Ipsita m
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    This is a good topic for a discussion with your advisor. My suggestion would be to start with reading review papers and limit yourself to a more specific subfield for other publications. –  Aug 17 '21 at 08:03
  • although not directly related, this question might be interesting for you: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5585/how-does-one-keep-herself-updated-with-new-research-without-forgetting-older-res/ – Sursula Aug 17 '21 at 08:10
  • as is this one: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/6105/what-is-the-best-way-of-keeping-track-of-academic-readings-and-persons – Sursula Aug 17 '21 at 08:11
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    maybe this question is of help to you: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/7615/129015 – nonthevisor Aug 17 '21 at 08:13
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    The role of conference proceedings is field-specific. From what I understand, they don't play any big role in other fields than computer science, engineering, and some subfields that are closely related to these two (e.g., computational chemistry). – lighthouse keeper Aug 17 '21 at 08:29
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    I would also suggest having twitter and following people in your field. It is often the case that researchers summarise their work on twitter or mention relevant work/conferences that you may be interested in attending. – CatM Aug 18 '21 at 22:43

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It is simply not possible to read every paper published in your field, nor would it be a good use of your time. As @Roland mentioned in the comments - this is something which your supervisor should be able to guide you on.

A few things that I recommend doing are:

  1. Find out who the superstar researchers are in your subfield. Follow them and read the papers they publish - at least those which are relevant to your work (eg. set up alerts on Google scholar/Scopus, follow on twitter, etc). This has the added advantage of helping you learn how to do/write high quality research.
  2. Read papers which cite your papers (you can set alerts in Google scholar, Scopus, etc)- this will give you an idea of how your work fits in with what others are doing.
  3. Talk with collaborators/other students about your research interests (you don't need to give much away and risk being scooped). They could send you papers which they find which may be of interest.
  4. Identify the top journals in your field and keep an eye on papers published there in your areas of interest. You can search for papers published in other journals when you have a specific topic in mind, for example when working on a particular research project.

I'm not in the field of immunology/biology so can't comment on the importance of conference papers.

atom44
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I like to search publications from certain top-notch research groups at conferences.

I guess it's also good to follow professors on google scholar (you will get notifications on new papers), though I haven't tried much yet.

Kato
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