Keeping Up to Date: Exercises

Create a RSS reader account with Google Reader:

  1. Go to
  2. Choose to Create an account now
  3. Fill in the form
  4. Click on help and view the 3-page tutorial.
  5. Add a new RSS subscription:

Look out for the standard icon or

Right-click on the icon select Copy Shortcut and paste it into your RSS reader or click on the icon and paste the URL of the page that appears into your reader.

A few suggestions for finding some useful RSS feeds:

INTUTE

BBC

OxfordUniversity

Times Higher Education Supplement

You can even create your own newsfeed – perhaps to tell people about new developments in your research project or news from a society or club.

OUCS provides information at:

- provides a useful overview of email alerts provided by Google

Set up journal alerts from Zetoc

Zetoc Email alert:

  1. From Zetoc homepage click on "Zetoc alert".
  2. Create a new Zetoc Alert list by entering your email address and giving the list a name. Choose "yes" to include hyperlinks. Click "create".
  3. Add some journal titles to the Alert list you have created. Browse or search for relevant journals. Click on "add" next to the journal you wish to add to your list. You will then receive an email every time that journal is updated by Zetoc.

Zetoc RSS feed:

  1. From Zetoc homepage click on "Zetoc RSS".
  2. Browse or search for relevant journal titles.
  3. Click on the RSS logo next to the journal title you wish to set up a feed for.
  4. A page of XML code will open. Copy the url of this page.
  5. Open your feed reader. If Google, click on "Add subscription". Paste the url into the box that appears. Click "Add". A new feed will then appear in your reader every time that journal is updated by Zetoc.

Citation alerts from Web of Science:

  1. Search for relevant articles
  2. Choose full display of a citation you would like to know if anyone cites by clicking on article title.
  3. Click on Citation alert
  4. You will be prompted to log-in or to register.You can set whatever account email and password you like.
  5. The default alert is email. To set up RSS feed instead click on the XML button and then copy and paste the URL that appears in your browser’s address bar into the RSS reader.
  6. To change the alert settings, access Citation Alerts (using the drop down menu at the top of every page) and click the "Modify Settings" button. You would do this to cancel email alerts or to stop emails coming or change the format of the emails.

Saving Search histories with Web of Science:

  1. You can save a search either so you can run it again later or so you can be alerted to new records which match the search when they are entered in the database
  2. Do a search eg Global warming
  3. Click on Search history at the top of the page
  4. Click on Save history to save the last search set that you create.
  5. Open Saved History lets you see your saved histories
  6. You will then see the XML button that you can use to set up the RSS feed
  7. You can turn the alerting off or delete the search history
  8. Choose Open to run the search again

Try setting up alerts and search histories in other databases eg Scopus, Firstsearch, Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, Ovid. Use the help options if it isn’t obvious and note that not everything is available from all the databases. Ask for help if you get stuck.

Go to and see what mailing lists might be relevant for your subject

If you have a Refworks account you may like to try the following from within Refworks:

1Click on Search | RSS Feeds

2Enter the URL for an RSS feed (e.g. for Nature; for New Statesman)

Or type <journal title> and RSS into Google, and if you find a feed either select and copy the displayed URL – or right click on the RSS or XML orange button, and select Copy Shortcut to paste as RSS feed URL)

3Click Add RSS Feed

4Once the feed has been added, click on feed title

5A separate window will open with updated feeds

6Select a few you are interested in

7Click Import to pull them into RefWorks

8From RefWorks you can now click live link to get to full text from Reference