2023-12-15 - Efficiently Tracking Academic Frontier Trends - Minority

Efficiently Tracking Academic Frontiers - Minority#

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Preface#

The importance of literature retrieval and reading for researchers is self-evident. In different contexts (research stages), the methods of retrieval and reading vary: first, when venturing into unfamiliar fields, we actively and intensively collect and read to quickly understand the development history and current status of the field; second, when conducting research, we already have a relatively comprehensive grasp of the situation in the field, and reading literature tends to be more passive and scattered, relying on literature push notifications or periodically checking key journals and major research team outputs, aiming to draw inspiration and insights from the latest research and optimize our technical routes in a timely manner.

This article will focus on the second scenario, sharing my literature tracking habits and tools. I come from an engineering background, so my views and the methods I introduce may have limitations; I ask for the readers' understanding.

My Academic Frontier Tracking Habits#

Google Scholar, WeChat Official Accounts, and Web of Science#

In the early stages of my academic career, I was accustomed to using Google Scholar for literature subscriptions, which should be our most basic and commonly used tool. Google Scholar sends notifications via email. In my opinion, this method is too old-fashioned; when I open my email, I may not be in a reading state, and the "permanent" storage feature of email inevitably leads to procrastination in reading later.

In contrast, reading WeChat Official Accounts is much more convenient. My boss and colleagues often share research updates from WeChat Official Accounts. I mentioned in "Home Server Practice" that I dislike reading Official Accounts in WeChat: first, the messages are in a disordered time sequence; second, I cannot browse content by category, making it difficult for my brain to switch quickly between research content and entertainment; third, there are many recommended contents that interrupt browsing, which I am not interested in; fourth, there is no reading record, so I cannot determine which articles I have read or mark them for later reading, and my "File Transfer Assistant" serves as a "read later" function.

Mistakenly entered by Shidi & File Transfer Assistant version "Read Later"

However, it cannot be denied that there are many valuable articles and information within WeChat Official Accounts. Many services also provide content subscriptions for WeChat Official Accounts, such as Feeddd and WeRSS. But these services either have low real-time updates, such as updating once every few days or even weeks, or are expensive.

Through an opportunity to write a review, I came into contact with Web of Science. Before this, I was dissatisfied with its access IP restrictions and low timeliness, but this time, the completeness, accuracy, and rigorous citation data of its literature information greatly helped us. Like Google Scholar, Web of Science also provides subscription notifications via email.1

Comparison of Three Subscription Methods#

Google Scholar, WeChat Official Accounts, and Web of Science each have their pros and cons, and I have made a simple comparison.

| | WeChat | Google Scholar | Web of Science | |
| ---- | -------------- | -------------- | --- |
| Timeliness | ⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐ |
| Relevance | ⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| Customization | ⭐ | ⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐ |

In terms of timeliness. Google Scholar generally indexes papers within a week of being published online, while WeChat Official Account articles are influenced by the quality of the articles and whether they are submitted by authors, overall not as good as Google Scholar. Web of Science has the worst timeliness, as it usually takes some time from when a paper is published to when it is indexed by Web of Science, depending on how diligent the journal editors are, commonly taking 1 to 3 months.
In terms of relevance. Both Google Scholar and Web of Science provide filtering tools for author subscriptions and citation subscriptions, with similar relevance. WeChat, however, has the weakest relevance because the content pushed is entirely determined by the sender.
In terms of customization. Web of Science allows for the creation of tracking services for search queries, making it undoubtedly the strongest in customization. Google Scholar mainly allows tracking of authors and citations. WeChat allows for subscription to different Official Accounts, which could also be considered a form of customization, I guess.

In addition, each has some unique aspects.

Google Scholar captures preprints and patents, which indirectly enhances its timeliness.
The papers pushed by WeChat Official Accounts may have low relevance to one's own research, but for researchers in interdisciplinary fields, as long as the right Official Accounts are selected, there can often be surprises. Sometimes, articles from Official Accounts invite authors for interpretations, revealing details beyond the papers. Additionally, Official Accounts also push meeting notifications, job postings, and academic gossip, which can be topics of conversation in academic life.
The timeliness of Web of Science is relatively low, but its only drawback is this; as long as the search queries are well maintained, I have a sense of security that any paper in the field will eventually be pushed to me, making it hard to miss anything.

Official Account Information: Author Interpretations, Meeting Notifications, Job Postings

Why Not Directly Use Journal Subscription Sources#

Many academic journals provide RSS feeds, which are convenient to subscribe to, but overall relevance is low, and it is time-consuming and labor-intensive to check, resulting in low efficiency in obtaining effective literature, except for a few niche journals. However, based on my boss's suggestions and the habits of our research group, we still pay extra attention to high-impact comprehensive journals like Nature and Science, partly because high-quality papers may inspire new ideas, and partly to stay informed about hot research topics in the academic circle.

New Platforms Show Their Strengths#

Before continuing, let's discuss why I did not choose other platforms for literature subscriptions, such as Researcher, Researchgate, Semantic Scholar, X-MOL. The fundamental reason is that I have become accustomed to the existing subscription methods, and their reliability is also guaranteed.

More traditional academic information aggregation platforms provide journal subscriptions and keyword search subscription functions, but their essence is no different from directly subscribing to the official RSS of journals or using keyword subscriptions via Scholar Alert. I personally judge that these subscription methods cannot match the breadth of Google Scholar backed by search engines or the precision of the meticulously maintained Web of Science.

As a representative of new forces, Semantic Scholar claims to be an AI-driven scientific literature research tool that can recommend related papers based on the collected papers using recommendation algorithms. The recommended papers may extend beyond the scope of citations, which could help broaden readers' thinking, but I cannot provide an evaluation of its effectiveness at this time.

Researcher & Semantic Scholar

Now, I have become accustomed to using Google Scholar, WeChat, and Web of Science simultaneously to track academic frontiers. However, due to the fragmentation between platforms, reading efficiency is relatively low, and there are instances of missing important literature. What I need to do is to aggregate these three subscription sources together.

Academic Dynamic Tracking All in One#

Google Scholar, WeChat Official Accounts, and Web of Science push messages to readers through email subscriptions, app subscriptions, and email subscriptions (or browsing within the website). Using RSS to integrate these three information sources is a great way; by applying the existing framework, we only need to create our own RSS sources.

Academic Dynamic Tracking All in One

I have hosted these three RSS sources or the automatic generation scripts for RSS sources on GitHub, and readers can visit the following links for viewing and deployment:

osnsyc/Scholar-to-RSS: Google Scholar Alert to RSS;
osnsyc/WoS-to-RSS: Web of Science Alert to RSS;
osnsyc/Wechat-Scholar: Provides stable academic WeChat Official Account to RSS service.

Google Scholar to Aggregated Subscription#

By parsing the email information from scholaralerts-noreply@google.com, the titles, authors, abstracts, and source links of the papers are assembled according to the RSS protocol to generate an XML file, which is hosted by nginx, thus creating a Google Scholar RSS source. In Scholar-to-RSS, the email account used for reading is an Outlook email, which can be set as the receiving email on the Google Scholar Alerts page; it can also receive emails from other accounts by forwarding emails from scholaralerts-noreply@google.com to the Outlook email. Readers need to generate their own Outlook API Token; please refer to the project documentation for specific methods.

Web of Science to Aggregated Subscription#

Subscriptions from Web of Science can be obtained via email or read from the Web of Science homepage after logging in. Clicking the link in the email will redirect, which is slower than clicking to obtain it from the homepage. We use automated web methods to read subscription topics and download detailed information about the pushed literature. The titles, authors, abstracts, DOI links are parsed, and translations of titles and abstracts are automatically completed, assembled according to the RSS protocol to generate an XML file, which is hosted by nginx, thus creating a Web of Science RSS source. During the parsing process, the data is also saved/read as an SQLite database, checking for duplicates via DOI to avoid repeated pushes.

Due to access restrictions on Web of Science, two modes are set: one is the on-campus mode, where the IP subscribes to Clarivate's related services and can access directly; the other is the off-campus mode, where the IP has not subscribed to Clarivate's related services and needs to access through China Education and Research Network Federation Authentication and Resource Sharing Infrastructure (CARSI).

Configuring WoS-to-RSS requires the Web of Science login email and password; for off-campus visitors, it is also necessary to configure the affiliated university and unified authentication method (student ID, password).

Google Scholar, WoS in Feedme

WeChat Official Accounts to Aggregated Subscription#

Subscribing to WeChat Official Accounts is a challenging issue. For project security reasons, detailed technical routes are not disclosed; please look for keywords related to the functionality in "Home Server Practice"; please note that there is no out-of-the-box method.

Of course, readers will not leave empty-handed; in Wechat-Scholar, I provide a free subscription source for WeChat Official Accounts, but it only offers academic WeChat Official Accounts to RSS service. What is an academic Official Account? I define it as an account that focuses on academic information, paper sharing, and high-quality popular science. In terms of timeliness, Wechat-Scholar updates daily at 7 am and 2 pm, retaining the latest 20 entries (or those from the past 7 days). If you cannot find the Official Account you need in the list, you can initiate an Issues request for addition. Additionally, Wechat-Scholar does not provide full-text output; please obtain the full text from the RSS client.

Wechat in Feedme

Aggregated Subscription and Filtering#

The quality of the pushes from Google Scholar and Web of Science entirely depends on the tracking content we preset; abusing tracking can dilute valuable literature, which requires us to carefully maintain tracking entries.

There are three main types of tracking: citation tracking, search tracking, and author tracking.2

Recently, I discovered that WoS has launched a fourth category: Recommendations alert: Alert will email you once a month with personalized article recommendations. The recommendation algorithm is unknown, and the author has not yet used it.

In Google Scholar, I only set up author tracking. In Web of Science, I set up all three types of tracking; the key to citation tracking is to find the pioneering or milestone papers in the field, which need to be updated in a timely manner over time; the key to search tracking lies in the setting of keywords, generally a combination of recognized professional terms or abbreviations in the field; author tracking can include all relevant scholars in the field.

Web of Science Tracking Subscription

After converting WeChat Official Accounts to aggregated subscriptions, one can be overwhelmed by the vast amount of information, making it necessary to configure effective information filtering. I categorize/filter through keywords such as "recommendation", "interview", "annual salary", "recruitment", "appointment", "meeting", "notification", etc.

Filtering and predefined tags in TTRSS

Reading and Reflection#

Reading literature in an RSS reader that only supports mobile devices is unrealistic; I recommend choosing a cross-platform RSS reader. During times like waiting in line at the cafeteria, commuting, or in the restroom, one can skim abstracts anytime and anywhere, making selections and collections, and then further consolidating knowledge on a "productivity platform."

Conclusion#

We have achieved academic frontier tracking All in One through aggregated subscriptions, allowing concentrated browsing of academic information within a unified entry.

For research leaders, these may just be trivial skills, but I hope these small tools can assist busy researchers on the front lines.

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1 You can also access it on the WoS personal homepage.
2 Recently discovered that WoS has launched a fourth category: Recommendations alert: Alert will email you once a month with personalized article recommendations. The recommendation algorithm is unknown, and the author has not yet used it.

Google Scholar, WeChat Official Accounts, and Web of Science