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How do you keep up philosophically (and in your subfield)?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

I'm curious how people keep up with their subfields and with philosophy in general.

I personally check out anything new uploaded to PhilPapers under the problem of evil category, and I go through the titles of all the articles when there's a new issue in Faith and Philosophy, Religious Studies, Int. Journal for PoR, or Sophia, looking for anything interesting.

I'd appreciate if other people can share what they do. I'm especially curious if there are people who go through all the titles in generalist journals from the bottom half of Leiter's top 20 and outside of it. Lately I wondered if articles in those journals have a chance of being discovered and read simply by being published in those journals, without external sources like PhilPapers or citations pointing potential readers towards them.

Good query! It's been a bit more difficult to do consistently since the birth of my daughter, but in general I try to check PhilPapers' rolling list of recent works on a regular basis, see what looks interesting, and save things that look interesting in folders in my computer (sorted by area). This has always seemed to me like a good way to go given that PhilPapers is the largest repository for philosophical material. But I'm curious what other people do.

Any other readers care to weigh in?

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9 responses to “How do you keep up philosophically (and in your subfield)?”

  1. Michel

    Through my weekly PhilPapers publication digest, the PhilEvents feed, looking at tables of contents for a few specialist journals, and by refereeing a fair bit.
    But also: by writing. Writing keeps my hand in, but it also means I’m always running more extensive searches, engaging with new material, responding to referee comments that require engagement with other new material, etc.
    (I would add conferencing to the list, but I do much less of that now that I have a small child. I will get back to doing much more eventually, but not for a while.)

    Reply
  2. Hermias

    You can sign up to be emailed the table of contents of the journals you like.
    You can also sign up for keyword alerts – these are more scatter gun, but sometimes something good is there.
    “Stork” is the app I use.

    Reply
  3. Ted Shear

    I have an RSS feed set up that aggregates new publications in the journals I’m interested in. Then I skim the abstracts when new issues drop and will read whatever looks interesting or helpful for something I’m working on. There’s a bunch of RSS readers out there and I haven’t put too much work into finding the best one but I use feedly with the NetNewsWire app on my phone.

    Reply
  4. Daniel Weltman

    I have a Google Scholar alert for a few phrases (like “secession” and “gender abolition”) which helps a lot. For journals that let me sign up to get notifications when new issues are published, I do that, and I skim the table of contents of each new issue. For journals without this, I use PhilPapers to track their new publications. I use the PhilPapers topic notifications too, but for most topics that gives me too much stuff.

    Reply
  5. Ten-Herng Lai

    the philosophy paperboy is a good website. I try to browse through all the titles, though I skip some journals based on journal title. Like I don’t think journals that publish formal logic will be immediately relevant to my research on political philosophy.
    That being said, there are some journals left out by the paperboy. For example, JAAC hasn’t been updated by the website, so I go directly to the journal website. Same for new journals such as PP and F&E.
    PhilPapers.
    Google scholars sometimes makes some recommendations. I also keep track of some people and who cites them.

    Reply
  6. Andrea Raimondi

    Hi all,
    I’m the guy who manages the philosophypaperboy. We are about to release a new version of the website. Here are a few updates:
    1) We have built a new tech stack from scratch, including a new RSS engine and back and front end.
    2) Users can now log in and create a profile.
    3) Logged-in users can now bookmark papers.
    4) The main feature: logged-in users can now bookmark journals. When journals are bookmarked, they compose your personal newsfeed. You can access it by switching, on the homepage, from “all journals” to “my journals.
    5) We have added an analytics page to our database. You can use it to compare journals across the years. You might see some journals displaying zero papers in the past. This is because some entries are still missing since we are still completing the transfer of data from the old database to the new. Fear not.
    By the end of the year, we’ll start releasing “add-ons” from other disciplines. Colleagues whose work is interdisciplinary (say, philosophy of physics, biology, or aesthetics and performance studies) can then add relevant journals from outside philosophy to their personal newsfeed.
    If anyone is interested in beta testing the new service, just drop me an email at raimondi.and@gmail.com

    Reply
  7. Niles Crane

    I read the canonical papers on whatever I’m writing about and then read whatever gets cited in those papers. Then I use google scholar to figure out who is citing those papers more recently. I also check the newsfeed on PhilPeople pretty regularly and find a lot I would’ve otherwise missed that way. A lot of what I see there shows up only because people I follow liked it, so I try to make a point of liking stuff semi-regularly to put it on other people’s radar.

    Reply
  8. grad student

    I register the top 25 generalist journals and some specialist journals in “my journals” of PhilPapers. And I see the “New Journal Articles” with the “My Journals” filter on.

    Reply
  9. Amanda

    There are some great suggestions already. I think it is important to keep an eye on what is published. But there is always a lag between what is accepted for publication and what people are currently thinking and talking about, since it takes so long for papers to go through review in philosophy. To really keep yourself in the most current loop, I suggest the following in addition to keeping up with the journals:
    – Go to the top conferences/workshops in your subfield, even if it is just to attend/chair a session. This is the most reliable indicator of what topics and papers are being discussed.
    – Take a look at what the grad students are doing in the big PhD granting institutions, especially those going on the market soon. This is the best indicator of where the field is going.

    Reply

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