Female Science Professor recently [recently: in grad student time] had a post on keeping up with journal reading where she discussed the challenges of a cluttered email inbox and staying current with publications. I appreciated the comment section as much as the posts itself for the opportunity to learn how others stay afloat with new publications.
I follow academic journals and other publications via RSS feed in Google Reader. This system works for me as I have journals filed together by broad topics that are relevant to my current work (e.g., child maltreatment, culture and identity, child development, etc.). I also subscribe to research journals outside my discipline (e.g., criminology, public health, neuroscience) and this has been a helpful way to become familiar with work in related fields. My morning routine usually includes scanning Reader which helps me stay afloat with subscriptions [and stay somewhat current with life outside of grad school].
Many of the FSP commenters also have subscriptions to PubMed search terms which seems incredibly helpful and will be my next keeping-up-with-journals experiment.
Beyond academic journals I also follow Research Blogging, Futurity, and other projects that disseminate research through commentary or aggregation. My latest favorite site to follow is LSE’s Impact of Social Sciences project as they post on great ideas for disseminating findings.
How do you stay current with your research reading?