Web feeds and RSS

Save time, minimize emails and stay on top of your research with RSS feeds. 

• Many academic journals and websites offer RSS feeds as a convenience to their audiences.
• You can use RSS feeds where they are available in lieu of registering for publisher or journal table of contents email alerts.
• Check all your feeds at once and at your leisure instead of visiting mulitple websites on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly schedule.

Ask a Librarian - or contact your liaison librarian for assistance if you need help getting started.

Learn more from LIDC.

1. Obtain an RSS feed reader

Web-based RSS feed readers

• Bloglines - register for an account and subscribe to RSS feeds in the "Feeds" tab.
• Live Bookmarks - via Mozilla/Firefox 2.0 - If you use Mozilla/Firefox 2.0 you can add RSS feeds as "Live Bookmarks" or choose to add the feed to another feed reader service such as Bloglines, Google Reader or My Yahoo.
• My Yahoo - Allows you to create a personal page for monitoring selected websites, blogs, etc. for updates.
• Open Directory Project - List of Web-based feed readers. The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors.

Desktop RSS feed readers

• Open Directory Project - List of feed readers by platform (Linux, Mac OS, Windows...).
• CBC's list of suggested RSS feed readers.
• How do I get a News Reader (from the BBC).

2. Add/subscribe to RSS feeds

Academic journals/publishers

• American Anthropological Association
• American Chemical Society
• American Geophysical Union
• American Insitute of Physics
• American Physical Society
• American Psychological Association
• Annual Reviews
• Blackwell Synergy
• Cambridge University Press
• Chronicle of Higher Education
• Economist
• Emerald
• IEEE Explore
• Ingenta Connect
• Institute of Physics
• International Union of Crystallography (IUCr)
• National Research Council of Canada
• Nature Publishing Group
• Oxford University Press
• PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
• Project Muse
• Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Royal Society of Chemistry
• Sage
• Science
• Science Direct (Elsevier)
• Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
• SpringerLink
• Taylor & Francis - InformaWorld
• Wiley Interscience

Add the SFU Library Off Campus Access Bookmarklet to authenticate as an SFU Library user and access the full text immediately.

Websites and blogs

• Canada News Centre (Government of Canada)
• CFI (Canada Foundation for Innovation) News
• Chronicle of Higher Education
  • Daily News
  • News Blog
  • Wired Campus
  • Chronicle Career News and Advice
• EDUCAUSE - a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology.
• Government of British Columbia News Feeds
  • Ministry of Advanced Education
• Inside Higher Ed - an online source for news, opinion and jobs for all of higher education.
• National Research Council of Canada - News Releases
• Statistics Canada (the Daily) - feeds are available by suject.

• SFU Events Calendars
• SFU Library and Student Learning Commons News and Events
• SFU News

News services

• BBC
• CBC
• Globe and Mail
• New York Times
• Reuters News Feeds
• Times Higher Education Supplement (UK)
• Times Online RSS Feeds (UK)
• Washington Post

"RSS - any of various XML file formats suitable for disseminating real-time information via the Internet on a subscription basis."

"RSS n."  The New Oxford American Dictionary, second edition. Ed. Erin McKean. Oxford University Press, 2005. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.  Simon Fraser University. 5 April 2007 <http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t183.e66889>