Keeping current

It is a bother to keep current with the scientific literature. Everyone knows it is growing exponentially, although if you look at the new publication histograms on Pubmed they look rather linear. At least over the years after which most papers were actually submitted to Pubmed upon publication, i.e. 1990ies and later. If you pull out the number of publications per year on a given search, let us say "blood pressure" it looks like this:

It rises in fits and starts probably depending on how far back different journals have decided to back-register. If you look at the second graph there does seem to be a flattening of the curve in the sixties and onward indicating that the growth may be linear after all. Sadly, for blood pressure that means 18 000 articles per year as of 2014, and the rate increases with another thousand per year every three years. Working in several fields means trying to keep up with each of them, and makes for a grand total that does not bear thinking about.

Luckily the journals provide current contents feeds that one can read using a RSS. I used Google reader until that was cancelled and now I have moved to the brilliant service CommaFeed, which provides a very clean RSS-reader interface. Below is a screenshot of my current list of journal feeds.

With this kind of list you get a couple of hundred new publications every week, so there is no chance of reading all of them. What I do is skim the titles and selected abstracts in the reader, anything that appears interesting and relevant I will send to Papers to read more thoroughly. In addition, I regularly scan Pubmed for relevant articles, as you do when writing papers, grants, and lectures.

A matter of questionable importance

One of the most important aspects of reading is to have a good place to read. Crazy, you say. Any place is a good place to read, and of course you are right. When I was younger I would read all the time and everywhere, walking around bumping into people, missing my bus-stops, and getting reprimanded in class. Indeed every place was a good place to read, but now it's different. Wherever I find myself I have somewhere else I should be, or I have something that more or less urgently needs to get done. So when at home, when at rest, a special place to sit and read and think is an important thing. A place of solace (A fortress of solitude! No, too much?).

It is obviously not as important as roof over your head or food and clean water, but important never the less. For years I haven't had one, and I haven't read as much as I used to. It has simply not been a priority when furnishing the flat.

Anyway, we were at IKEA the other day and there was this new armchair model. Simple, not overly large, really cheap, and above all with side head-rests. I had to have it. There have been a number of armchairs I have had to have over the years, but since this was simple, small and cheap I could buy it on impulse. Now I have the ideal reading corner, and it complements my life-sized decorative boxer perfectly. It is close to my books, but not the work books, and it is far away from the computer and the heaps of manuscripts, applications and statistical analyses to be worked on.

I do have a small confession to make. I am writing this in said chair, and I did just check my mail, but then rules are made to be broken. Especially small silly rules with no real fundamental importance. Anyway, there shan't be too much work done here, and I shall honestly try to get some reading done real soon now.