How to "become familiar with the literature", inter alia to find appropriate method to publish independent research?
Maybe look for review journals on the topic. In my area there are several such journals. Researchers often do a "state of the topic" paper on something they are working on. You can scan a few 100 review topic titles. Should take you three or four hours. Then find three or four articles that you can zero in on. You should be able to "surface" read these articles in a couple days. Your university librarian should be able to help you find appropriate review journals. Once you have those papers you can also read the citations they tell you are most important.