Following social media pages of authors/researchers, publishers and individual journal titles are a great way to find out about new research. Often, an announcement of research in progress or a soon to be published article/book/chapter is shared before the actual item is indexed and added to a database.
Using social media to stay updated with new literature is useful if you favour a few particular journals, wish to network with researchers and if you have social media accounts like Twitter or Facebook.
Research Gate
Academia.edu
Follow and engage with researchers and organisational accounts. Subscribe to newsfeeds for hashtags to receive notifications of tweets related to conferences, news, research projects, etc.
This is a third-party tool which allows you to follow hashtags. More information on how to use it can be found here.
Subject-based list of recommended academic tweeters from London School of Economics
Twitter's advanced search allows you to search for specific keywords, accounts or locations.
Use these lists to find other researchers with similar interests.
This book provides practical advice and suggestions for using social media to find new research, network and share your own scholarship
Chapter 2: Non-academic and academic social networking sites for online scholarly communities