What are RSS news feeds and how do I use them?

What are RSS news feeds?

RSS feeds are web files that summarise the latest content of a web page and allow you to quickly link back to the original article. RSS feeds are best read using a feed reader. Feed readers track and manage which articles you have read. New items are highlighted and displayed for you to read on a daily or hourly basis. By using RSS feeds and a feed reader, you can be sure of keeping up to date with the latest RSC published content. 

Why use RSS?

Once installed and set up with RSS feeds, your feed reader will check and update itself with the latest content for the feeds you have chosen. This means you can quickly scan all your sources for interesting items, then click through to the articles. You do not have to wait for an emailed alert or remember to manually check for updates. Some software will allow you to search your RSS feeds, helping you to control and sift through a large range of possible sources for items of interest. Our journal RSS feeds have also been enhanced with subject information (from the Open Biomedical Ontologies) and primary compounds (displayed as structures and identified by InChI in the feed metadata) as part of Project Prospect.

How do I get started?

There are a number of feed readers available, which can either be web-based or installed programs on your computer. Browsers like Firefox, Opera and Safari can read RSS feeds (a plug-in may be required). Depending on the feed reader chosen, you can subscribe to one of the RSC feeds below by either clicking on one of the links , or by dragging or pasting the URL of the news feed into your reader. The reader should then validate the feed and update.