Google scholar for recent papers → select the ones that appear relevant to your query → trace citations backwards until you find the seminal papers in the subfield → pull the first authors and last authors’ CVs → they will likely have written or contributed to a broad survey textbook, and may have written a specialist one on your chosen subtopic.
This can sometimes produce funny results with mature fields, where most of the major work was done decades ago. Reading high quality works by the giants of the 20th century and comparing it to more modern material can be a humbling experience for some—it certainly has been for me on more than one occasion.
Reading high quality works by the giants of the 20th century and comparing it to more modern material can be a humbling experience for some—it certainly has been for me on more than one occasion.
I am not sure, are you saying, that for some fields “works by the giants of the 20th century” is great, while modern material is bad?
Correct. I have found that the works written at the time when the relevant technical work had just recently been completed, by the people who made those breakthroughs, is often vastly superior to summary work written decades after the field’s last major breakthrough.
If I remember correctly, Elon Musk cited some older texts on rocketry as his ‘tree trunk’ of knowledge about the subject.
This advice only applies to mature fields, in places where fundamental breakthroughs are happening regularly, this advice is downright awful.
When approaching a new field:
Google scholar for recent papers → select the ones that appear relevant to your query → trace citations backwards until you find the seminal papers in the subfield → pull the first authors and last authors’ CVs → they will likely have written or contributed to a broad survey textbook, and may have written a specialist one on your chosen subtopic.
This can sometimes produce funny results with mature fields, where most of the major work was done decades ago. Reading high quality works by the giants of the 20th century and comparing it to more modern material can be a humbling experience for some—it certainly has been for me on more than one occasion.
I am not sure, are you saying, that for some fields “works by the giants of the 20th century” is great, while modern material is bad?
Correct. I have found that the works written at the time when the relevant technical work had just recently been completed, by the people who made those breakthroughs, is often vastly superior to summary work written decades after the field’s last major breakthrough.
If I remember correctly, Elon Musk cited some older texts on rocketry as his ‘tree trunk’ of knowledge about the subject.
This advice only applies to mature fields, in places where fundamental breakthroughs are happening regularly, this advice is downright awful.