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Keeping up to date with RSS

About RSS

You can use RSS feeds to get the latest information from websites, scientific journals or other sources without having to search the web.
RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary“. RSS feeds are XML documents that contain content such as headlines, abstracts and images. They can be displayed on a web page or read using an RSS reader.

RSS readers

An RSS reader or aggregator collects all the information from the RSS feeds that you subscribe to. this allows you to browse all of this information without having to visit each website. You can subscribe to as many RSS feeds as you like.

Different types of RSS readers are available:

• Desktop RSS readers, e.g. Feedreader
• Web-based RSS readers, e.g. Bloglines or Google Reader

Many RSS readers are available as free downloads. You can find an extensive list of RSS readers can be found at: http://allrss.com/rssreaders.html

Finding RSS feeds

How can you find RSS feeds for your research?

• Look for the orange RSS button on a relevant website:  or
• Search the RSS search engines, e.g. Bloglines.com, Feedster.com, Ask.com's Blog & Feed search.

How to add a new RSS feed to your reader

• Click on the RSS button on a web page. You will now probably see a page in XML format, thsi is the RSS feed.
• Copy the URL of the RSS feed.
• Go to your RSS reader and select "Add a a new feed".
• Paste the URL of the RSS feed into your reader.

Types of RSS feeds

News items

• Many organisations offer RSS feeds for news items on their websites.
• You can also run a search on Google News and create an RSS feed for this search.

Journal Table of Contents alerts

• The home pages of many journals have an RSS feed for their table of contents.
• Most publishers have a page listing the RSS feeds for all of their journals.

Search alerts
When you set up a search alert, databases are automatically searched for new content. Your RSS reader informs you about new and relevant information and trends in your research field. You can directly access new references using your RSS reader.

Citation alerts
You can set up RSS feeds for citation alerts in Web of Science and Scopus. A citation alert notifies you when an article that has been added to the database, cites an article that you have already selected. Go to the article's full record for the RSS citation alert option.

Patents

• FreePatentsOnline offers RSS feeds by category or by USPTO classification.
• You can also create a search alert in the patent database, the Derwent Innovations Index. You can access this database via the TU Delft Library website. To create an RSS feed, follow the same steps as for the Web of Science.

Social bookmarking
CiteULike and Connotea are free online services for storing, organising and sharing academic papers. You can find out who is reading the same papers, discover literature relevant to your field, and use tags to group papers together. Both services offer RSS feeds for new items.