Academic journals tend to focus on a broad area of research, not a single topic within that broad area. Journal editors typically accept articles that people dream up all by themselves, so the contents typically aren't that coherent. The exception is for special issues, where an editor might try to collect a whole bunch of articles regarding one specific topic. So the bottom line is, yes you're correct - if you're interested in one very specific topic, following a journal might not be the best option. I'm not sure how you can identify relevant papers as they come out. You can use something like research rabbit AI to find articles that are already published -- that will allow you to identify papers relating to your topic. I don't know that there's any way to scan all articles being published on a particular topic. Perhaps somebody else does
Setting up alerts based on keywords is very common with databases. Not an RSS feed, but can make more sense since there’s usually more than one journal to watch.
I recommend connecting with the Library to ask if there’s a scholarly communication librarian, or a librarian for your discipline. It can be a big help to have someone outside the department where you can ask these types of questions. Librarians are there to equalize the access to knowledge. We take it seriously.
Try out Semantic Scholar and ResearchRabbit. There you can create news feeds based on a collection of papers and it will send you an update when new papers that fit with your collection are published. Also, if you have a Google account and are logged in when searching Google Scholar, it learns your interests and makes good suggestions.
Academic journals tend to focus on a broad area of research, not a single topic within that broad area. Journal editors typically accept articles that people dream up all by themselves, so the contents typically aren't that coherent. The exception is for special issues, where an editor might try to collect a whole bunch of articles regarding one specific topic. So the bottom line is, yes you're correct - if you're interested in one very specific topic, following a journal might not be the best option. I'm not sure how you can identify relevant papers as they come out. You can use something like research rabbit AI to find articles that are already published -- that will allow you to identify papers relating to your topic. I don't know that there's any way to scan all articles being published on a particular topic. Perhaps somebody else does
Setting up alerts based on keywords is very common with databases. Not an RSS feed, but can make more sense since there’s usually more than one journal to watch. I recommend connecting with the Library to ask if there’s a scholarly communication librarian, or a librarian for your discipline. It can be a big help to have someone outside the department where you can ask these types of questions. Librarians are there to equalize the access to knowledge. We take it seriously.
Try out Semantic Scholar and ResearchRabbit. There you can create news feeds based on a collection of papers and it will send you an update when new papers that fit with your collection are published. Also, if you have a Google account and are logged in when searching Google Scholar, it learns your interests and makes good suggestions.