<p>and each and every issue of those? I see people accumulate huge collections of them for recreational reading. and i can't imagine how much time it would take to really appreciate each of the articles. most of the articles demand a graduate-level understanding of the material to really appreciate them. so if you read multiple articles, you'd have to have a similar level of understanding in many fields (at a graduate level). Or are people merely content with not FULLY comprehending most of the articles in them? It takes hours to really appreciate most articles, after all. and while the learning curves decline with increasing familiarity with the field, then one has to look at another field and take hours and hours to fully appreciate those fields too.</p>
<p>No. I imagine even professors only read the articles, at least, relevant to their research, at most, in their field.</p>
<p>The scenario probably plays out like so for a molecular biologist:</p>
<p><em>opens new issue</em>
"Ugh, science policy… "
<em>flip flip flip</em>
“Bose-Einstein conden-what?”
<em>flip flip flip</em>
“Oh, the biology section! Oooh, RNAi in budding yeast!”
<em>reads intently</em>
<em>finishes & discards on desk outside office, along with the last 100 or so issues, for others to peruse</em></p>
<p>I only read the articles that are relevant to me.</p>
<p>I’ll check out the abstract of other things that might be interesting, and consider reading further.</p>
<p>Pretty sure nobody or nearly nobody even reads journals anymore in my department. We all rely on aggregators to filter out articles by key words relevant to our field.</p>
<p>To keep myself updated in science (not my field specifically), I usually read the science section of BBC news and ScienceDaily. The only time I directly access a specific journal is for my research or if an article I read from those sites interests me and I look it up.</p>
<p>Nobody in my department actually reads journals. They read relevant papers by pubmed filters and simple word of mouth.</p>
<p>professors tend to read science and nature more than some student’s think. Lets face it they are the distributors and promoters of the trendy topics. they cover a lot of topics, so its like reading a newspaper, you hop, pick and choose what grabs your attention.</p>
<p>For serious devotion to your research field, most have various e-alert services that survey multiple journals (that are rarely read cover to cover)</p>
<p>Pick and choose. As for reviews, definitely skim through them just to see if there’s anything relevant. You’ll be surprised that you’ll remembered the names of the books and their brief summaries when someone else talks about this topic and you, for some reason, remember this book that isn’t even in your field… It only shows that you’re aware of what’s going on your field (although some undergrads might be awed by your “amazing” intelligence and assumed that you read that book…).</p>
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<p>I wholeheartedly agree, which begs the question of why they even bother publishing printed copies at all. How many trees must we continue to consign to tree heaven? </p>
<p>Note, this is different from a general purpose newspaper or magazine which while nobody actually fully reads, at least, everybody could read. I doubt there are more than a handful of people in the entire world who could read an entire issue of Science, Nature, or any other top scientific journal and actually understand each and every article.</p>
<p>Reading Science is definitely not like reading a newspaper.</p>
<p>That said, most people in my field don’t read Science or Nature cover to cover. We may occasionally look like articles from each journal if they are relevant, but I’m a behavioral health researcher straddling public health and social psychology, and Science and Nature don’t really like us as much as the natural/physical sciences people. Once in a while something comes up and we read it.</p>
<p>i beg to differ, I have always read Science and nature like reading a newspaper. Since it is not a trade journal, you read with a bit of skepticism the hot trendy topics in your own field. You read with curiosity (and often some innocence) the items outside of your field. </p>
<p>Much of the journal is just being informed on a cursory level the topics of discussion in a broad array of areas outside of one’s area of training. There are also topics about careers, politics, governmental funding and general controversies that have more to do with people than science proper. So for me, it is like a newspaper!</p>
<p>I also suspect there is a generational shift in how these journals are used and read. I probably represent an older (and perhaps outdated) style!</p>
<p>I think it is a generational thing. I’m a graduate student and a Millennial, so I read both newspapers and journals like Science online. When I read Science, I’m not leafing through the hard copy but the electronic version, and I only click on articles of interest (within or without my field), and then I file them away for future reference. I have to read the articles more closely because most of them are not in my field. With newspapers I tend to browse more widely and reading newspaper articles doesn’t require as much cognitive power as Science.</p>
<p>it also may be an effect of how long you’re in science. You’ve seen more trends come and go, and reading Science or Nature no longer takes much cognitive power</p>
<p>and to clarify that last point. Its because after a certain point, you’re less worried about the details when scanning general articles of interest outside of your field. In your field, you’re just much more familiar with a larger number of methodologies, so it also doesn’t take so much effort after awhile</p>
<p>They used to have somebody printing out Science and Nature?!?! Until recently, my department actually had a library with updated paper journals all kept current and some even bound into 3 ring binders. They even had journals that nobody reads more than one article out of in their whole graduate career. Needless to say, with space at a premium and simple computing, this is all a relic of the past like a card catalog or eight tracks.</p>