Using RSS Feeds to keep up to date

These can be an alternative to email alerts, used by quite a few websites, and also by databases and online journals. Cincinnati Public Library has a good general introduction. The most common icon for rss feeds is The RSS feed icon.

What are advantages

  • Each article appears as a separate item (email alerts tend to send one email per week with all articles found) - thus probably easier to identify the useful ones.
  • You can view items from multiple alerts in one list.
  • Avoids any spam-filter problems.
  • You can still forward useful items by email.

Using RSS readers at Southampton

There is a great variety of RSS readers available - both computer and web-based. A web-based reader is likely to be more convenient if you use public machines. (On staff MDE machines a program called '(RSS) Feedreader' is available for download via the Control Panel.) A number of email clients have an intergrated reader (e.g. Outlook 2007).

Resources using RSS Feeds

Databases: A a number of databases provide these features at present:

Web of Knowledge - Go to Search History, select the right set(s) and use 'Save History' - once you have done this you should see a XML icon.

CSA, Ebscohost, Engineering Village (Compendex & Geobase) & Ovid - look out for RSS icons in the search results screen.

Ejournals: A number of providers including American Chemical Society, American Institute of Physics, American Physical Society, BioMed Central, Blackwell Synergy, IEEEXplore, IngentaConnect, Institute of Physics, Nature, Project MUSE, ScienceDirect, Springer, Wiley provide RSS feeds. Others may also provide feeds - look out for the usual icons on journal homepages.