How can I keep up with all the important advances in fields related to mine? Being updated with new ideas in many research fields is impossible, seen the diversity of research topics and the strong relations that exists between them. Most of the researchers in the world, are needing to interact with many fields and to be up to date with the trending ideas in each one of them.

Example: if one researcher is specialized in remote-sensing. Being up to date in this field is possible with some effort. But, this field is related to many other fields ( computer vision, image processing, machine learning, artificial intelligence..). Any new idea in any of these fields could directly impact remote sensing as well. The problem is that this researcher cannot cope with the high speed changes that occurs in these fields.

This example is applicable to many cases as well. And many of you are facing the same situation.

I am in the beginning of my PhD, my thesis interact with many research fields. I have to summarizes the trending ideas in many fields to conclude the state of the art of my thesis. Following the traditional method by accessing the literature of each field may out passes the goal of my thesis.

I want to know if there is a mean to know the trending research ideas in one research topic and the statistics related to them that are gaining some interest.

Is there any mean to track advancement in a research field?
There is no easy way:

First step would be to talk to your advisor.

Second step would be to look at recent issues of the main journals in your field.

Third step would be to attend some of the main conferences in your field, listen to the talks and talk to the people.

After that you make up your mind what your opinion the trending issues are, and repeat steps 1 and 2 (and maybe 3) to try to confirm that.