Social media tools, including RSS feeds, e-mail alerts, blogs and Twitter, are goods ways to stay current in your field of research. Following experts in your community of practice through social media is a way of staying up-to-date on trends, the latest conference proceedings, grey literature and current news.
Social media is at its most useful when many people participate, so try being active in social media (e.g. posting, commenting and retweeting) to bring your research, comments and opinions into your field.
Subscribing to an RSS feed saves you time by bringing blog posts, news articles and more to you, rather than you going out to each individual website or journal. To really take advantage of RSS feeds you'll need an RSS Reader like Google Reader. Watch RSS in Plain English (3 min) for more on how RSS saves you time.
Want to get started?
Step 1: Pick an RSS reader
Or compare different options using Wikipedia's list of aggregators.
Step 2: Subscribe to news that is of interest to you
Step 3: Sit back and watch the news come to you!
Check out our Journal Notifications Guides for detailed step-by-step instructions, including setting up notification from databases.