Keeping up with relevant research

Originally added on 7th February 2008
Last updated on 4th October 2008

I spend about three hours weekly scanning medical and psychological journals on the internet. Typically I zoom through the article titles looking for anything relevant to stress, health & wellbeing. If something seems interesting, I read the article's abstract. I may well then download it to my bibliographic database - I use EndNote. Currently I have well over 11,000 references stored and the number grows steadily. I use this information to improve my treatment of clients who come to me for help, and as a basis for talks and articles.

I also send monthly lists of relevant articles to three organizations I'm involved with - the British Association for Behavioural & Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP), the British Holistic Medical Association (BHMA), and Depression Alliance Scotland (DAS). I'm also posting some of these monthly article lists to this blog. You can search most of what I've put on the lists since the start of 2008 through my online Connotea database.

I routinely scan over 30 journals (see below for the current mix) and I also scatter-gun out from there following up leads to other interesting research. It may all seem a lot, and it is ... but I'm very lucky to be fascinated by this emerging research. I quite often get the same kind of excited pleasure from opening up these journals as I used to as a kid when I got my hands on a new comic.

Weekly journals: British Medical Journal; Journal of the American Medical Association.

Fortnightly journals: Psychiatric News

Monthly journals: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition; American Journal of Psychiatry; Arbor Clinical Nutrition Updates; Archives of General Psychiatry; Bandolier; Behavior Research and Therapy; British Journal of Psychiatry; Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry; Journal of Clinical Psychiatry; Journal of Consciousness Studies; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology; Psychological Medicine