Specialty Updates: Current Awareness Made Easy

07 Aug 2026

Ivona Coghlan

Over 1.5 million scientific articles on biomedical and life sciences are now published and collected in the PubMed database every year.

González-Márquez R, Schmidt L, Schmidt BM et al. The Landscape of Biomedical Research. Patterns 2024; 5: 6. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2024.100968.

It can seem an impossible task to keep abreast of current research. We know it’s hard finding time for professional awareness and development. We want to support you. As a member of the college, you are entitled to receive our Specialty Updates. Focused bulletins containing a carefully curated crop of research specific to your specialty.

Tell me more

Specialty Updates are bi-monthly bulletins designed to help you stay on top of new surgical developments. We currently cover eleven specialties. Each edition contains 40–60 items including research articles and clinical guidance.

Concise summaries allow you to quickly grasp the significance of each item. We also include links to full text wherever possible. And if we don’t have full text? We can still support you in accessing an article via our document delivery service.

Which specialities have an Update?

  • Cardiothoracic
  • Colorectal
  • Emergency General Surgery
  • Neurosurgery
  • Otolaryngology
  • Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
  • Paediatric Surgery
  • Plastic Surgery
  • Trauma & Orthopaedics
  • Urology
  • Vascular Surgery

How do you ensure the content is useful?

  1. Key journals list for each specialty - These journals are chosen for impact, research quality and accessibility. Last year, we reviewed and updated all our top journal lists to make sure they still provided robust, helpful research.
  2. An amazing cross-specialty check list - Our team also review some of the largest general journals including Medicine, The Lancetand more. This allows us to be sure we aren’t missing any significant articles that you need to know about
  3. We don’t work alone! - The specialty updates are a collaborative effort between our Evidence Support Team and our panels of specialty advisors. These are professionals, like yourselves, with direct experience of the specialty. They support us by suggesting key topics, sharing exciting new research and reviewing articles and summaries for relevance and accuracy.

Sounds good, but do the members like them?

Our customers love them. In 2025, we had an average of 15,555 subscribers. Take a look at some of the compliments we received in a recent survey:

Three word clouds showing feedback on content quality. Most prominent terms include "concise", "informative", "relevant", "useful", "excellent", "helpful", "good", "accessibility", "easy", "regular" and "well organised".

How can I subscribe?

All fellows and members of the college are entitled to receive the Update.

You can subscribe by following the instructions below:

  1. Sign in to your RCS England account and click on your name on the top right, or visit My Account.
  2. In the menu under “My Account”, click “Account Preferences”.
  3. Under “Surgical Specialties”, click “show options” and select the relevant specialties for you.
  4. Click “Update interests”.
  5. Under “Communication”, select “Specialty Updates”.
  6. Click “Update email preferences”.

How can I get involved?

Submit an article:

One of the main ways you can get involved is sharing new research with your colleagues.

If you know of strong studies published in the previous two months, you are welcome to submit them to our Updates. To keep the Update as useful as possible, we only accept guidelines, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, controlled trials or cohort studies.

Become a specialist advisor

Specialist advisors are volunteers who donate a few hours a month to support the Updates. They do this by commenting on each edition and answering our specialty specific questions.

We encourage all members, including students and retired members, to apply. We really want the panels to reflect the diversity of our members so if you are interested, please get in touch.

Find out more information.

TL/DR: Too Long, Didn’t Read

  • Specialty Updates – bi-monthly bulletins containing recent, high impact, peer reviewed research.
  • Subscribe – Go to My Account on our website and update your interests.
  • Get involved – submit research or become an advisor.
  • Current awareness? Continuous professional development? – Easier with Updates!

Ivona Coghlan, Information Specialist