Skip to Main Content

Keep Current With Scholarly Literature

Search Options

Follow the X* (formerly Twitter) accounts of scholars or organizations important to your research.  Your peers will be good sources for identifying useful social media options in your discipline, and you can make recommendations to your graduate students.

_____________

* Alternatives to Twitter are available.  For more information see:

Blogs

To find blogs on topics of interest, consult with faculty, peers, explore professional association websites, and be creative!  Google searches that combine keywords for your discipline with the term 'blog' can be a way to identify useful and interesting blogs.

Blogs can be monitored individually, using web browser bookmarks, or aggregated via an RSS newsreader service.

RSS

My thanks to Lorrie Pellack, Iowa State University Library,
whose work informed this guide.

Scholars often share pre-publication versions of their research through online repositories that seek to build communication networks among participants.  Some pre-print repositories are sponsored by scholarly organizations, others by publishers. Very selective examples include:

  • AAS Open - for African Academy of Sciences-funded and -affiliated researchers to publish immediately, without barriers and with the benefit of transparent peer review
  • Advance: A Sage Preprints Community - humanities and social sciences.
  • APSA Preprints - American Political Science Association
  • arXiv - a free distribution service and an open-access archive for scholarly articles in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics
  • MedRxiv.org - pre-print server for the health sciences
  • PsyArXiv - A free preprint service for the psychological sciences.  Maintained by The Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science
  • RePEc - a collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers in 102 countries to enhance the dissemination of research in Economics and related sciences
  • SocArXiv -  Open archive of the social sciences. SocArXiv papers are moderated before appearing.
  • Social Science Research Network (SSRN) - SSRN is devoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of research and is composed of a number of specialized research networks in the applied sciences, health sciences, life sciences, physical sciences, humanities, social sciences, law and economics

Don't see a relevant option?  Check these more complete lists of pre-publication repositories:

Many tools are being developed as applications of machine learning and generative-AI large-language models.  Each application addresses a particular challenge experienced in the research process.  Just a few of these tools are linked here.  Some of these are free, some offer a free trial period, others are fee-based.  Each varies in how explicit they are about the sources of their citation data, how frequently it is updated, or any biases of subject coverage or content.

If you work with a tool not listed below, please share it and your experience!

Advanced Search on Google Scholar

Advanced Search options in Google Scholar

Click on the 3 horizontal lines in the top left corner of the screen to bring up this menu.  Select Advanced Search.

 

The Advanced Search screen provides several self-explanatory field options to increase the precision of your search results.  Highlighted in this image is the option to specify a publication title.

 

Inclusive Searching

Ensuring that your literature review incorporates a wide range of views by diverse scholars in your discipline is an ongoing challenge.  Neither the publishing industry, nor the peer review process itself, is free of the biases of systemic racism, or the societal biases oppressing those of non-majority gender or sexual identities, or those with differing physical abilities. One strategy is to use library databases that specifically incorporate publications serving diverse communities when searching for literature.  Examples include Ethnic Newswatch and the Gender Studies Database.  These databases and more are linked from:

Additional strategies discussed elsewhere on this guide can help reduce this bias including:

  • Identify specific scholars who have shared their identity, then follow their social media -- consult with peers, faculty advisors or guest speakers for suggestions.
  • Identify relevant conferences, organization websites, podcasts, or social media feeds to follow
  • Cited Reference Searching using the publications of scholars who have shared their identity as key works
  • Are there journals in your field not yet indexed in library databases?  Track their new issues using Alerts (if offered by the publisher website); Advanced Searching in Google Scholar allows you to specify publication title in your search which may help bridge the gap.  Your subject librarian can assist you with identifying whether or not a journal is indexed.

There are efforts to highlight the expertise or published work of diverse scholars such as:

And efforts to improve the visibility, accessibility, and quality of journals published outside the dominant Western, often English-language, channels of scholarship.

Please share your successful strategies and helpful resources so they can be added to this guide to help others!!

My thanks to Brie Baumert, Gould Library, Carleton College, whose work on
Inclusive Searching identified many of the resources linked here.

Your Librarian

Profile Photo
Anne Zald
she/her
Contact:
Anne Zald
Subjects: Government Information; Regulatory Compliance; Gender & Sexuality Studies
Northwestern University Library
1970 Campus Drive
Evanston, IL 60208
Make an Appointment
847-467-6441