[Al-Khwarizmi]

(1) I manually check the proceedings of the important conferences in my subfield when they come out.

(2) I check my field's arXiv every other day or so.

(3) Google Scholar alerts me of papers that it thinks will interest me, based on my own papers, and it's very useful. Most of what it shows me is in fact interesting for me, and it sometimes catches papers from obscure venues that I wouldn't see otherwise. The problem is that you need to have papers published for this to work, and also, it's only good for stuff close to your own work, not that much for expanding horizons - (1), (2) and Google Scholar search are better for that.

[moyix]

Yep, this is what I do, except that security papers don't make it to arXiv so I also keep an eye on twitter (I have followed a bunch of academic security people) and a couple subreddits (/r/ReverseEngineering, /r/REMath, and /r/systems). It's not ideal, but it works out okay.

None of them are a substitute for a proper related work search when I'm writing up a paper though, this is just to keep current on what the trends and interests of the community are.

[copperx]

What does arXiv provide that your conference proceedings / association doesn't?

For example, I usually log in to the ACM site and go to my SIGs and see what's new there. I've never thought about visiting arXiv.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

It provides basically a subset (maybe around a third) of the same interesting papers that I see in conference proceedings, but it provides them earlier (typically 1 month to 1 year earlier). This can be important as my field (NLP) is quite fast-paced.

Just to give a concrete example, this paper (which was a relevant read for me) was published in TACL in July this year but was available in arXiv since February: https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.01595

[beevai142]

In physics, arXiv is where it's at --- conference proceedings are usually not very relevant, and people usually put also them on arxiv.

[mkehrt]

I'd be willing to be the GP is in CS; in CS, conferences are where it's at.

[tachim]

Conferences certainly dominate journals, but most people publish their work on arxiv first, anyway.

[eslaught]

I'm in CS (at the intersection of PL/compilers/HPC), and I've never heard of anyone in my field doing that. In fact, the only papers I've read on arxiv have been ones linked on HN.

[scott_s]

I'm in a similar intersection (hi!), and same goes for me. I want to change that, though. I have started publishing tech reports (I work in an industry research lab) whenever I submit a paper for review. I'm tired of work being stuck in endless review cycles, not public and not referenceable. Were I still in academia, I would submit to arxiv, and I have even recommended this to grad students.

[argonaut]

Virtually every ML paper is posted on arxiv before conferences.

[Ar-Curunir]

At least for theoretical CS and cryptography, Crypto ePrint and arXiv often have more detailed full versions of the paper. These are often invaluable for understanding proofs and other important details.

[Havoc]

>The problem is that you need to have papers published for this to work

The one place where one could actually use a "Follow" button for other people...there isn't one. Classic.

[ChuckMcM]

This is a great list, also there are sometimes mailing lists dedicated to a particular topic or field. It helps to have more eyes on the net.