Resources > RSS

What is RSS (and why do I want to use it)?

RSS stands for several things, including Really Simple Syndication and Rich Site Summary. It is a way to get all your favorite web content delivered to one place, so you don’t need to repeatedly visit sites looking for new information. RSS is often described as being a feed to which you can subscribe. Depending on whose feed you are viewing, RSS feeds can include a title and a small excerpt or even the entire content. There is an endless amount of content you can get with RSS including news, blog posts, forum posts, images, and journal tables of contents.

So where are all these feeds gathered? You need a feed reader (or aggregator). Feed readers can be online, built into another application, or a stand-alone downloadable program. Bloglines and Google Reader are two examples of free online aggregators. Thunderbird and Firefox are applications that have RSS built-in, and additional add-ons to make them more useable. RSSOwl and FeedDemon are two stand-alone aggregators. For reviews of some of these readers, visit Penn Computing’s RSS evaluation site: http://www.upenn.edu/computing/eval/2006/rss/finalreport.html

Once you have an aggregator, subscribing to feeds is easy. If a page has a feed you can subscribe to, you will usually see the orange icon somewhere on your browser. If you use Firefox, it can be found on the right-hand side of the address bar. In some cases, web sites list all their available feeds, and you can copy the feed’s link, and paste it directly into your feed reader. Look for small orange icons that say XML, RSS, or sometimes ATOM. In Bloglines, you can enter the main URL of a site, and it will show you a list of the feeds available to you.

RSS can save you a lot of time, especially if you are trying to keep up with more than just a few web sites Keeping abreast of current literature and research in your field with RSS is only a matter of subscribing to specific topical feeds. You can choose how often you want the feeds updated, and new content is highlighted or bolded. In addition, you can mark items to save for later, and go back and look at articles from the past.

Some of the resources listed below may require free sign up or a subscription. Penn Library has many suscbriptions to online content (journals, newspapers, databases, etc.) and while on campus you may have easy access to all resources listed. If you are off campus you may need to get to some of these via the Penn Library web site.

Introduction to Using Google Reader (pdf)

Getting RSS Feeds for your Google Alerts (pdf)

Handout on RSS from our Workshops (pdf)

RSS links tagged in del.icio.us. (Compiled by Addie Fuller)

RSS & Social Bookmarking Links on PennTags (Compiled by Addie Fuller)

We have prepared a file of bookmarks relevant to the PSC community which you can upload to your feed reader. Get the file here. (You will need to save it to your desktop by right-clicking on the link, and then import it into your feed reader from there.)

PSC Working Paper Series in the ScholarlyCommons@Penn
http://repository.upenn.edu/psc_working_papers/

Penn RSS News Feeds
http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/rss.php

ScholarlyCommons@Penn Recent Documents RSS Feed
http://repository.upenn.edu/

Social Sciences Computing (SSC) Blogs, Notes and Documentation
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/computing/ssc/information/blogs.html

Penn Libraries Events Feed
http://tags.library.upenn.edu/mp/tags/lookup/rss/project/17179
New Books Plus!
http://www.library.upenn.edu/news/171

CiteULike.org
"CiteULike is a free service to help academics to share, store, and organise the academic papers they are reading. When you see a paper on the web that interests you, you can click one button and have it added to your personal library. CiteULike automatically extracts the citation details, so there's no need to type them in yourself. It all works from within your web browser. There's no need to install any special software." (You can get an RSS feed for the entire site with the latest postings or you can select a tag or perform a search and get an RSS feed that only shows you the latest results for that tag or search words. Look for the RSS button on the bottom right of the page results. You can also export files into Endnote or BibTeX.)
http://www.citeulike.org/

Demography Matters Blog
"Demography Matters is a loose network of demographers, economists, and other social scientists who share a number of ideas in common" read more about this blog
http://demographymatters.blogspot.com/

Humanities and Social Sciences Online (H-NET)
"H-Net is an international interdisciplinary organization of scholars and teachers dedicated to developing the enormous educational potential of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Our edited lists and web sites publish peer reviewed essays, multimedia materials, and discussion for colleagues and the interested public."
http://www.h-net.org/about/rss.php

Economic & Social Research Council (UK) RSS News Feed
http://www.esrc.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/index.aspx

International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) What's New RSS Feed
http://www.iussp.org/

National Institutes of Health (NIH) Funding opportunities RSS Feed
http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/guide/rss_info.htm

National Institutes of Health (NIH) News & Events RSS Feed
http://www.nih.gov/news/#events

National Institutes of Health (NIH) Research Matters RSS Feed http://www.nih.gov/news/research_matters/index.htm

National Library of Medicine RSS Feeds and Podcasts
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/listserv/rss_podcasts.html

Pew Research Center RSS Feeds
http://pewresearch.org/rssfeeds/

Population and Health InfoShare: Sharing Knowledge to Improve Health Worldwide
http://www.phishare.org/

United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) RSS News Feeds
http://www.unfpa.org/rss/

United States Census Bureau RSS Feeds
http://www.census.gov/main/www/feeds.html

Urban Institute RSS Feeds
http://www.urban.org/about/UIRSS.cfm

World Health Organization News Feeds
http://www.who.int/about/licensing/rss/en/

American Psychological Association Journals
(Click on journal title to get to journal home page and then click on the View Table of Contents link to get to RSS button)
http://www.apa.org/journals/by_title.html

BBC News RSS Feeds
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/help/3223484.stm

BioMed Central Journal Feeds
(Click on journal title and locate the button "XML" on the bottom left side of the page. Additional Instructions: http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/about/rss/)
http://www.biomedcentral.com/browse/journals/

Blackwell Synergy Journals TOC RSS feeds
(Click on the subject of interest and then on the journal title. Each Journal home page has an RSS feed for the TOC. Read more about RSS on Blackwell.)
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/

Cambridge Journals Online RSS/Atom Feeds
(RSS buttons are available for all journals listed.)
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/byFeeds

HighWire Press Journals Listed By Topic
(Select your topical area, and the select the sub-topical area to get to a list of journals, click on title and then you will go tot he journal home page, where you may find an RSS or XML Icon or link. This list overlaps some of the others listed, but is valuable because it lists a large collection of journals by subject and links to their homepages.)
http://highwire.stanford.edu/lists/allsites.dtl

IngentaConnect
(Select the individual publication and locate the Alerting options link on the right side of the page to find the link to the RSS feeds. In addition, several boomarking options are available for linking content to boomarking software.)
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content

Medscape (WebMD) Headlines in RSS
http://www.medscape.com/pages/public/rss

Nature Journals RSS feeds
(Contains a list of RSS webfeeds.)
http://www.nature.com/webfeeds/index.html

New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/index.html

Oxford University Press Journals
(Click on journal title and locate link "XML RSS feed" under the Alerting Services section on the bottom right side of the page)
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/index.html

Project Muse Latest Issue - Journal Feeds
(This is an alphabetic list of RSS feeds by journal title. Additional Instructions on how to subscribe are located here: http://feeds.muse.jhu.edu/index.html)
http://feeds.muse.jhu.edu/latest_issues.html

Blackwell Synergy RSS feeds for your Searches
(Perform your search and click the search button. The results page will contain an RSS button that will feed you the latest results for the search you just performed. Read more about RSS on Blackwell.)
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/search/simple

ISI Web of Knowledge RSS FAQs
http://www.scientific.thomson.com/support/faq/wok3new/rss/

Berkeley Web of Science RSS Tutorial
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/BIOS/media/wos_rss3.html

One Source from The INFO Project at Johns Hopkins
One Source combines 6 unique databases are one RSS feed including: POPLINE, Photoshare, Pop Reporter, Health Communication Materials Database, Netlinks and Q&As from Jim Shelton Pearls.
http://www.infoforhealth.org/rss.php

What is RSS? - A Brief Introduction (Penn Library)
http://gethelp.library.upenn.edu/guides/engineering/alerts/whatisrss.html

Alerts: Staying Current With Research In Your Field (Penn Library)
http://gethelp.library.upenn.edu/guides/engineering/alerts/alerts.html

Alerting Services (Penn Library)
http://gethelp.library.upenn.edu/guides/general/databasealerts.html