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A Guide to Psychology Resources

Research guide to support courses offered in the department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

Keeping up

Listed on this page are some suggestions for keeping up with the field of psychology literature around you. If you have any questions about RSS or other related information feel free to contact Melissa for assistance.

Choosing a Feed Source

For any given journal, there are multiple ways to subscribe to the table of contents; the most common are from the publisher or from a database. There are advantages and disadvantages to every RSS source. When choosing, consider the following factors:

  • Is it available on AND off campus? Subscription-only databases are usually only available on campus. Workaround: If you use an online RSS reader, log into it when on campus and you will have access to those headlines off-campus.
  • Does it include an abstract?
  • Does it link to a full-text article? Some publisher feeds (most notably those from the APA) link to an abstract page lacking a link to the full-text that is not supported by any reference manager bookmarklets.
  • Does it include complete citation information?

Depending upon your needs, some compromises will be easier than others.

PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, & Medline: Creating a Cutomized Feed

Note: Be sure to add the feed to an aggregator within one week of its creation. A one-step alert will not expire unless the aggregator does not automatically update results (extremely unlikely) supplied by the feed for two months.

To set up a one-step RSS search alert:

  1. From the Result List or Search History Screen, click the RSS alert icon, or the Create alert for this search link. 

  2. A pop-up screen displays with the search alert information. Copy the Syndication Feed URL into your newsreader. One-Step Search Alert Confirmation Screen

 

You may also set up one-step journal alerts right from the Publications Browse Screen.

To set up a one-step RSS journal alert:

  1. Click the Publications link on the sub-toolbar. Once you have found the desired publication, click the RSS alert icon to the left of the publication name.

  2. A pop-up screen displays with the journal alert information. Copy the Syndication Feed URL into your newsreader. 

ScienceDirect: Creating a Customized Feed

ScienceDirect allows you to easily create a custom RSS feed for a journal, a database search of certain terms, or for citations of an article.

  1. From search results, a journal or book home page, a topic alert archive , My Alerts , cited by results, a browse page, or an article page, click RSS. If you do not have JavaScript™ enabled, a new browser window will open. Click Continue. The RSS set up screen will display with an RSS URL for your feed.
  2. Do one of the following:
    1. Copy and paste the URL into your RSS Reader.
    2. Click the URL to view the latest results for your RSS feed.

    OR

    1. If you use one of the RSS Readers listed below the feed URL, click that RSS Reader button. The RSS feed will automatically be added to your reader.
      Your RSS Reader will retrieve the latest articles in ScienceDirect that match your RSS feed request.

PubMed: Creating Customized Feeds

PubMed allows users to turn their PubMed search strategies into RSS feeds.

Here's how you can set up your custom PubMed RSS Feeds:

    • Conduct a search in PubMed (can be any search, simple or advanced).

    • No need to select records -- simply click on the Send to drop-down and select RSS Feed.

    • In the new screen, you can limit the number of records you want to receive each time you invoke the feed (default is 15).

    • Name your feed.

    • Click the Create Feed button.

    • In the new screen you'll see an XML icon. Right mouse-click and select copy shortcut to copy the custom-feed URL.

    • Paste the feed URL into your favorite feed reader.