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Keeping Your Research Current: RSS

A guide to tools and services that help you stay up to date with research in your area.

Manage your information flow - keep up to date with RSS

The volume and speed of information can be overwhelming.

Using RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a way of getting updated web content or 'feed' but only from web sites (such as news sites, university group sites or professional organisations' websites) that you've selected.

 RSS helps you manage information flow and  stay up to date with what interests you in a time efficient way.

  1.  Get an RSS  reader to collect, organize and display feeds from your chosen sites. 
  2. Visit some favorite sites relevant to your research and subscribe to their feeds if you'd like to receive automatic updates. 

Getting an RSS Reader

To receive RSS Feeds you will need to use a Feed Reader. A Feed Reader allows you to grab the RSS feeds from a variety of websites and displays them for you to read and use.

Popular Readers include:

 

  • See this list for more free online RSS Readers.

Browsers like Chrome, Safari and Firefox also include Feed Reading functionality. See this web page fromTechnorms on how to setup RSS feeds on different browsers. 

 

Getting RSS feeds

Once you have an RSS Reader you can subscribe to receive the latest content from sites that interest you. Examples include specific sections of newspapers or websites, journals, searches you have performed in databases and more. Look out for the  orange RSS icon  - and follow these instructions to add the feed to your reader:

  • Navigate to the site that you wish to subscribe to and locate the RSS icon.  If you are having trouble locating the icon, then check the location bar of your browser (where the web address appears) or scroll to the bottom of the page and look for a link to the site's RSS feeds.  Some sites, e.g. PLoS, Harvard Business Review,  have multiple feeds.
  • Right click on the icon and select "Copy Link Location".  Paste this link (URL) into the  Add Feeds section of your RSS reader.

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