One of the things I (and I am sure others) struggle with is keeping up with the current literature. Even in a field that seems small (like Law and Courts) there are dozens (if not more) new articles every year that are of interest. Between producing my own stuff, teaching, administrative responsibilities, baseball games, trips to the dog park, etc., I find it a challenge to keep up. Moreover, because I teach a graduate seminar every other year, I need to stay somewhat current so I can incorporate the most recent interesting literature into my seminar.
I have tried to solve this by scanning certain journals every 3 months and reading every article on judicial politics in those journals. The journals I look at are: APSR, AJPS, JOP, PRQ, APR, SSQ, BJPS, LSR, JLEO, JELS, Political Behavior, Public Choice, QJPS, and Judicature. Some of these are more useful than others. (I rarely find anything in BJPS or Public Choice.) I also only read empirical articles about judicial politics–relatively broadly defined. I am sure I miss some good article by limiting my scope to only these journals. And I do not read law reviews at all, unless there is an article specifically brought to my attention. But I think I get MOST of the good scholarship out there via this search method. As for books…that is a lot harder. Both in terms of time and cost (to me and the students), I tend to prefer articles to books (though I do try to read those I find interesting).
So…all of this is a preface to a question: How are others able to stay current? What strategies do you use?
2 responses so far ↓
jly // July 7, 2009 at 5:55 pm |
Chris, one thing that I do is simply from time to time download the syllabi of people like yourself and see what I haven’t read yet. This is an especially good way to catch articles that don’t fall into the more well known journals. Also, I feel compelled to add Justice System Journal to the list of journals that people might check on from time to time.
bonneau // July 7, 2009 at 6:10 pm |
Jeff:
Good call on JSJ. I, too, check that one, along with SPPQ. The reason I accidentally omitted those 2 is that they are not easily available on-line (so they are not on my on-line list)–but I get both on the mail.
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