I don't read journal articles for fun the way I do for class--where I sit down and try to understand as much as I can, devoting hours to reading a single article. I read them just to be swept in awe by the overwhelming amount of fantastic science being done right now, browsing through, clicking around, mostly skimming abstracts and figures. Mostly I find myself reading biological chemistry and organic chemistry. And lately biophysics (mostly just the abstract and introduction because I really don't understand the math behind it). Some of the biophysical techniques that are going on...I can't even imagine how fantastic the scientific world is going to be in 10 or 20 years. For example, they can do NMR imaging of a virus now.
I read a review of total synthesis in the last hundred years and how far it has advanced. And docking carbohydrate synthesis on DNA as a way to functionalize microchips. And each leads to references to wander to, letting my mind wander and skim and wander and skim.
I'm realizing that it's now getting to be time to start actually keeping up with the lit--even if it is just skimming every few weeks, or even if it's just reading C&E News and/or review journals. Since there's so much out there and no one can read everything, my professors are reading the same journals, they've just been doing it for longer and with more specialized interests.
I finally have the background to get a vague sense of what articles in the current lit (at least in organic chemistry, biological chemistry, some of the more qualitative aspects of biophysics, biochemistry, and cellular & molecular biology) are about, even if I don't fully understand them, and learning about science isn't going to be spoon-fed to me through assignments for the rest of my life. It's time to start getting into the habit of reading journals like it's time to get in the habit of reading the newspaper. Not cover to cover, not necessarily every day (or even every week--after all, I still am a student), but as something I do periodically.
ACS Spring 2023 in Indianapolis
1 year ago
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Either Alan or Dan--can't remember which--told me I should devote one morning a week to flipping through the latest journals in my field. I haven't been doing it recently, but this post may inspire me to start again.
I find the online table of contents is usually enough to let me know what I'm interested in in the journal, since they usually put a representative/interesting figure up with the title & authors.
yeah--I put feeds up on my google reader that I periodically skim through.
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