As a practicing researcher i often find myself falling behind in keeping up with published research in my field outside my narrow research area. However, I recognize that my research could be informed by the theoretical perspective, methodology, and findings from research not directly in my narrow area of research. How have other researchers found a way to address this problem?
Surprisingly for myself, I have found facebook to be a place to get information on upcoming new research in my field. I search for, and follow pages of some academic and professional bodies (that are not really popular going by the current standards). The catch is that only 'newsworthy' research gets highlighted in most pages.
Not a comprehensive solution though, but it does provide some insights.
In my experience people (e.g. researchers) form the best interface to knowledge outside my field of expertise. So a viable strategy is to set op a collaboration with researchers from other fields, possibly in a side project or so.
Chinchu and Koen, thank you for your suggestions. I suspect we researchers are using a variety of ways to keep up with emerging research outside of our narrow areas, and you two have led off our discussion with some different ones for us to consider.
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