Keeping up with the Joneses' research

One challenge I've encountered as a junior faculty member is trying to stay abreast of the latest developments in philosophy generally and in my subfields in particular. The stack of books that I intend [sic.] to read grows much more quickly than I can read them. The same goes for articles, and I'm sure there are many more books and articles that should be on my list but aren't.

Here are a few inadequate measures I've adopted to try to stay current:

• Getting weekly updates from PhilPapers. I told PhilPapers what areas interest me and signed up to get a weekly email containing titles and abstracts for new papers in those areas. When the email comes in, I scan the titles looking for interesting articles and read their abstracts. If a paper looks particularly interesting or important, I download it, add it to my PhilPapers reading list, or do something else that helps me pretend that I will one day read it. If I had more patience and self-discipline, I'd probably just go to the PhilPapers site every day and scan titles of all of the new articles, rather than looking at those in my discipline.
• Reading Philosophy Compass articles in the morning. Every month or so, I download nearly every article in the latest issue of Philosophy Compass into my Dropbox folder, along with a back issue or two. Most mornings, while I drink my coffee, I open Dropbox on my iPad and read one of the articles. This helps me stay abreast of developments in other subfields. Conveniently, it takes me about as long to read one Philosophy Compass article as it does to get my fill of coffee.
• Going to conferences. My university has been great about providing travel support. This has enabled me to go to conferences, where I find out what other people are working on at the moment.
• Reading books and articles, both recent and not-so-recent, that relate to whatever paper(s) I'm working on at the moment. A lot of the reading I do is motivated by papers that I'm working on. I'll run across a problem or issue and set out to find out what other people have said and are currently saying about it. PhilPapers and the "cited by" links on Google Scholar help me find recent stuff on the topic, which usually leads me down a very informative rabbit hole of further reading.

I've tried other things, such as following journals' RSS feeds and blocking out time in my schedule to read new books and articles that aren't directly related to my own research, but I've had trouble sticking to those routines.

What strategies have people tried for staying abreast of current developments in philosophy? What's worked well? What hasn't?

Comments

[Mark Alfano]

important post, David. I use some pretty similar strategies:

(1) If you have a train or bus commute, use that time to read and tag abstracts of interest, and perhaps to read Philosophy Compass articles and NDPR reviews.

(2) About conferences: I find that cold-emailing people you know will be there to set up coffee, lunch, beer, or whatever often works.

(3) Force yourself to become a leaf editor for one of the categories at philpapers. That way you have a responsibility to keep up at least with the items in that sub-sub-sub-field.

[Marcus Arvan]

Great post, David -- very helpful. I don't have a habit of reading Philosophy Compass, but I think I'll start now. My strategies are:

(1) Going to conferences (particularly ones with well-known names who probably keep up with the literature very well).

(2) Scanning the tables of contents of a good array of journals about once a month.

(3) Scanning the "new items" at philpapers (I also get weekly updates on my AOS areas, but find that scanning *all* the new items to be helpful).

Last, but not least, I also try to:

(4) Work new books/articles I've heard good things about into my teaching (when appropriate).

For example, if I'm doing an independent study with a student on X, I might have us read a couple new-ish books on X I haven't read but have heard good things about. Same for upper-level courses. I did a human rights course recently where I assigned a few books I'd heard good things about. This gave me an opportunity to really read them closely while at the same time getting some teaching done.

[Moti Mizrahi]

In addition to all the great resources that have already been mentioned, I would add the following:

http://tannertoc.blogspot.com/

This is a blog that showcases TOCs from philosophy journals all in one place. I recommend adding it to your Goggle Reader--very convenient and useful.

As for blogs in general, such as NewApps, Experimental Philosophy, etc., I think that they can also be a good resource for checking out what people are working on.