Bottom Line: Read is an easy to use app that can help busy academicians deal with information overload by bringing you personalized and customizable curation of journal articles. If your institution supports full-text PDF access, Read offers a portable tool to keep up with the primary literature. Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ - Very Useful It is difficult to stay on top of the ever-expanding medical literature. How many of the 750,000 articles from over 5,647 MEDLINE journals that PubMed indexed in 2014 did you read? How do you even know where to start? Can technology help us become more efficient in dealing with information overload? How can a busy academic educator keep up with the primary literature in the most efficient way? Read is a free app for both iOS and Android that offers quick and portable access to the literature in an intuitive interface. I’ve got to admit, I love this app and use it regularly to stay abreast of updates in my niche area. It is like having an army of personal assistants comb through thousands of journal articles every day to pick out the ones that are relevant to me. And it is free! It is the best deal since the Subway $6 Footlong of the Day.
Where I derive most value from the app is the “My Followed keyword” feature. It brings articles curated from across PubMed that are related to my words of interest. If you’re interested in sedation, this feature can bring you every new article published that mentions “ketamine” from the emergency medicine, anesthesia, EMS, pediatrics, surgery, and basic science literature. This feature ensures that you will be aware of any new work being published within your academic niche.
There are competitors in the medical journal app market, and several alternatives to Read exist. While Read is more focused on medical journals and boasts a larger library of journals, apps like DocNews and Docphin add the ability to follow mainstream media news, making them feel more like a one-stop shop. DocNews also recently started offering CME credit for reading articles. Some prefer their design and user experience over Read. BrowZine has a beautiful interface and adds compatibility with other apps like Dropbox, Evernote, and Zotero. Bottom Line: Read is an easy to use app that can help busy academicians deal with information overload by bringing you personalized and customizable curation of journal articles. If your institution supports full-text PDF access, Read offers a portable tool to keep up with the primary literature. Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ - Very Useful Medical Education Research Fellow Division of Emergency Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine Nominations to contribute:
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