Too many papers, too little time.Credit: Hulton Archive/Stringer/Getty
The challenge of staying up to date with the scientific literature has become a burden for everyone from students to senior investigators. In fields such as public health, annual publication counts now exceed half a million articles — more than 1,300 papers every day. Experienced researchers and early-career scientists alike report anxiety about falling behind and emphasize the importance of building efficient reading habits. Some have noted that the pressure to keep up has left many scientists increasingly reliant on social media and recommendation systems to find papers, rather than systematic reading.
What’s clear is that the difficulty of keeping up with the literature is no longer a niche problem, but one that cuts across disciplines, methodologies and seniority levels. As researchers at different stages of our scientific journeys — a PhD student, a mid-career investigator and a senior group leader — we, too, have faced this challenge. Collectively, we have spent decades navigating the scientific literature, testing different ways to filter information and adapting to the accelerating pace of publication.
Here, we offer five complementary strategies to help you filter the literature and stay up to date on your research field. These are the strategies that we have found to be the most effective, and we hope that they will help others, too, whatever their field or career stage.
Subscribe to what matters
One of the simplest and most reliable ways to stay current is through journal table of contents (ToC) alerts. This conventional method might seem outdated in the age of personalized algorithms, but subscribing to a carefully curated selection of journals remains a sound strategy. Often, ToC alerts highlight key articles and provide direct links to abstracts or full texts. Some can even filter by article type and have specific alerts for reviews, editorials, research articles or methods papers.
Bluesky’s science takeover: 70% of Nature poll respondents use platform
Receiving a curated list of new papers from a handful of reputable journals provides a structured and predictable way to remain grounded in the core literature of your field. It’s particularly helpful for recognizing recurring themes, spotting important reviews and following long-term shifts in editorial priorities — all without needing to actively search. We recommend subscribing to a blend of landmark and niche journals to capture both broad and field-specific research.
You might miss important articles published in journals that fall outside your alert list. When browsing long tables of contents, especially under time pressure, it’s easy to skim over titles that later prove relevant. Still, for many researchers, ToC alerts remain a first line of defence against information overload.
Let PubMed do the work
Moving beyond broad overviews, use platforms such as PubMed and Google Scholar to create a personalized surveillance system that monitors the literature for the topics, authors or keywords that matter to you. Users can set up saved searches and automated alerts, which can be configured to arrive weekly or monthly by e-mail.
Queries can incorporate Boolean operators (such as ‘AND’, ‘OR’ and ‘NOT’) and be polished to reduce the number of irrelevant hits. This method is particularly useful for capturing articles that appear in lesser-known journals or are outside your usual reading scope.
The same can be done for preprint servers such as bioRxiv and medRxiv, which allow users to set up RSS (really simple syndication) feeds or e-mail alerts on the basis of keywords, authors or subject areas. Including preprints in your alerts can give you early insight into emerging findings, methods and controversies because they frequently appear weeks or even months before peer-reviewed publication.
That said, custom alerts require maintenance. Poorly constructed queries can return overwhelming — and often irrelevant — results. And even well-designed alerts can pile up in your inbox, adding to the very overload they’re meant to reduce. Still, when used properly, search alerts across both peer-reviewed databases and preprint repositories can surface important literature with remarkable precision.
Follow the people, not the papers
Although many tools focus on topics or journals, an increasingly effective way to filter literature is to follow the researchers themselves. Professional networks such as ResearchGate and LinkedIn allow scientists to receive updates directly from the people and labs they care about. This person-centred approach can be particularly powerful for those who already know the key players in their field and want to monitor their scientific output in a more digestible, progressive format. For instance, ResearchGate can notify you when someone you follow uploads a new publication, preprint or data set. It also generates curated suggestions on the basis of your reading habits, recommendations and profile interests. These help to surface work that might otherwise be missed. Unlike static e-mail alerts, these feeds evolve as your network grows, offering a dynamic way to stay informed.
This approach also has the advantage of reinforcing professional awareness. Associating papers with specific individuals or groups can help to contextualize findings, track thematic trajectories in laboratories and even identify potential collaborators or competitors. Some authors also post supplementary materials or tutorials that aren’t always accessible through conventional journals, adding important context.
Of course, not all researchers upload their work promptly, and some don’t use these platforms at all. As with social media, the quality of your feed is only as strong as the network you build. Still, for those willing to invest the time, following the people behind the papers offers a valuable, filtered window into the scientific landscape. A good tip for getting started is to identify active users in your field and screen their followers and followings for inspiration.
Use social media wisely
Researchers increasingly use social-media platforms such as X and Bluesky to share their latest publications, discuss preprints, highlight interesting studies and comment on scientific developments. Following the right accounts can provide a curated stream of relevant papers and ideas, often before they appear in journals or search alerts. These platforms also allow you to interact with researchers you might otherwise meet only at conferences — or perhaps be too shy to approach in person.