Following the literature of your research field is an important part of the job of a modern scientist. There’re different strategies to do that as, for example, manually visiting your favourite publications webpages or using Google Scholar. In this post, I am going to show you how to do that using RSS (Really Simple Syndication) web feed.
RSS Channels
RSS is a very popular web feed, widely used for blogs and podcasts to keep their readers updated about their content. Basically, it updates a document available as a web page or a document (usually .rss or .xml extensions) with the most recent posts. Maybe you have already noticed that most of the scientific journals have an RSS channel available on their web pages which shows the last accepted or published papers. The American Chemical Society (ACS) shows all the RSS channels for its journals easily accessible on a single page, for example.
RSS Readers
Once you found an RSS channel of your interest, you should add that to an RSS reader, which will update periodically their content and keep track of your reading. Nowadays, a bunch of reader alternatives can be found, including offline software and browser extensions. My personal choice is Feedly, an online service that can be easily accessed by web browsers or using apps like Reeder. In Feedly, you can organize your RSS collection in feed folders, according to the subjects of your interest. It also has useful tools to find channels and also to follow newsletters. I’ve been using this for years and the Free version has been enough until now.
I hope you enjoy this small tutorial! Are you now ready to keep up with your research field literature?
Best regards and stay safe!