NeuroBriefer resources
Resources for keeping up with neuroscience literature
Practical notes for neuroscience researchers, PhD students, postdocs, and lab heads who are trying to keep up with the literature while still doing experiments, writing, supervising, teaching, reviewing, and thinking carefully.
During my PhD and postdoc, I gradually realized that finding papers was not the hardest part anymore. The harder problem was deciding which papers deserved the small amount of reading time I actually had. These pages are about that problem.
How to stay up to date with neuroscience literature
A practical way to use PubMed alerts, journal email alerts, Google Scholar, preprints, RSS, reference managers, and personalized tools without drowning in alerts.
Best neuroscience literature tools
A researcher's comparison of the tools that help with discovery, triage, organization, and deeper reading.
Personalized neuroscience literature feeds
How to choose keywords, revise them over time, and build a weekly reading habit around papers that actually match your work.
PubMed alerts vs NeuroBriefer
When comprehensive PubMed searches are the right tool, when weekly triage summaries help, and why many researchers need both.
NeuroBriefer FAQ
Longer answers for researchers wondering what NeuroBriefer is, what it is not, how summaries work, and how to use it responsibly.
If I were starting again today
Every tool promises to help you stay up to date. In practice, most researchers eventually stop reading half the alerts they receive. The challenge is not finding more papers. It is deciding which papers deserve attention.
If I were setting up a literature system from scratch, I would keep it deliberately small: one or two focused PubMed alerts for coverage, NeuroBriefer for weekly triage, Zotero for papers worth keeping, and ResearchRabbit or Connected Papers when entering a new topic. NeuroBriefer grew out of that need for triage. It is currently free to use, and it is meant to support literature discovery rather than replace careful reading.