Staying informed about your field of work can be time consuming. Fortunately, there are several great internet tools to find out quickly what’s going on in your professional area. Here are my favourite tools.
RSS feeds
You can use RSS feeds when you want to stay up to date about new content on certain websites. For example, I have RSS feeds on new papers in the journals Tobacco Control and Nicotine & Tobacco Research. It is also possible to create RSS feeds for blogs that you want to follow (for example, see the orange RSS feed logo at the upper right corner of this blog). You need to set up a feed reader to read these feeds, for example Google reader. Follow the steps here (English) or here (Dutch) to start using RSS feeds. You can log into the feed reader everywhere, using your desktop computer, laptop, smartphone or tablet.
Google alerts
When you want to stay informed about new online content on a particular topic instead of all new content on a particular website, you can use Google alerts. I use Google alerts to stay up to date about news on the smoke-free law in the Netherlands, regardless of whether the news is featured on a major news website or a small local site. Also, I have an alert for my own name, so I know what people write about me on the internet. An additional benefit is that I know immediately when one of my papers is published online. You can get the alerts into your feed reader (see above) or in your email inbox. Follow the steps here to start using Google alerts.
A less efficient but more fun way to stay informed is using Twitter. Follow people who are in your field of work and let them inform you with their tweets. Of course, Twitter is much more than only getting information, it is also about communication, sharing, ideas, advice, education, networking, and more. Therefore, Twitter can take up more of your time than you would want. An efficient way to use Twitter for information is using Twitter lists. For some fields there are existing lists that you can follow. For example, this list of international tobacco control professionals (English) or this list of Dutch tobacco control professionals (Dutch). Find out here how you can create your own list.
Newsletters
Of course you can also get your information from newsletters. Some are available on paper or through email and others can be followed online. If you do not want to be disturbed every time a new email newsletter comes in, you can set up a ‘rule’ that automatically moves the newsletter to a certain folder. Follow the steps here to set up a rule in Outlook. There are also Twitter newsletters, that can be helpful if you want to know what is said on Twitter about a specific topic but don’t want to be on Twitter yourself ór don’t have the time to follow everything on Twitter. For example, this daily newsletter on smoke-free issues or this weekly newsletter on Dutch tobacco control issues (both in English).
And now: YOUR favourite tools
I have performed a small survey on Twitter (n = 5) to find out how others stay informed about their field of work. The most popular tools to stay informed were: Twitter (n = 5), institutional websites (n = 4), newsletters (n = 3), journal websites (n = 2), and LinkedIn (n = 2). Only one respondent reported using RSS feeds and none used Google alerts (you should give them a try, they are my favourites).
I realise that a survey among five people is not that informative and that my sample is highly biased as it consists of my Twitter followers. Therefore, I invite you to comment below and let me know how YOU stay informed. Are there other tools that we should all start using today? Please let us know!
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