RSS: Really Simple Syndication A Publisher’s Perspective Howard Ratner NISO Metadata Conference 20 May 2004.

RSS: Really Simple Syndication A Publisher’s Perspective

Howard RatnerNISO Metadata Conference

20 May 2004

Overview

Usage Drivers

RSS

Urchin

Active Usage Drivers

Active inbound linking CrossRef, PubMed, Web of Science, ChemPort

Email alerts ToC, subject specific, special offers Advance Online Publication Press Releases / Press Site

Advertising Banner, skyscraper, mini online ads

Passive Usage Drivers

Passive Inbound linking DOIs & urls in print OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative) Searching

Metadata and full text searches STM specific and general searches

RSS feeds

Place hooks to the content in the places where a user is most likely to find it in their

daily workflow.

Overview

Usage Drivers

RSS

Urchin

What is RSS?

A ‘machine-readable web page’

A lightweight XML format for syndicating news titles, links and descriptions

Originally developed by Netscape, more recently adopted by bloggers

Consumed by: Users with desktop readers Webmasters who want to embed titles from

other sites in their own pages News aggregators

Different versions of RSS

0.9

0.91 0.92 2.0 “Atom”

1.0

Simple: Plain XML

Extensible: RDF/XML

= most popular formats

Example of an RSS feed

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?><!DOCTYPE rss SYSTEM "http://www.bbc.co.uk/syndication/feeds/news/rss-0.91.dtd"><rss version="0.91"> <channel> <title>BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition</title> <link>http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/click/rss/0.91/public/-/1/hi/default.stm</link> <description>Updated every minute of every day</description> <language>en-gb</language> <lastBuildDate>Tue, 16 Sep 03 09:21:32 GMT</lastBuildDate> <copyright>Copyright: (C) British Broadcasting Corporation, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/services/copyright/html/default.stm</copyright> <docs>http://www.bbc.co.uk/syndication/</docs> <image> <title>BBC News</title> <url>http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/bbc_news_120x60.gif</url> <link>http://news.bbc.co.uk</link> </image> <item> <title>Hutton witnesses face tough questions</title> <description>Witnesses at the inquiry into Dr David Kelly's death will face cross-examination, a day after a BBC boss and a spy chief gave evidence.</description> <link>http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/click/rss/0.91/public/-/1/hi/uk_politics/3111926.stm</link> </item> <item> <title>Deadly blast ends Japan siege</title> <description>At least three people are killed in an explosion in an office where a disgruntled worker had taken hostages.</description>

…

Example of an RSS feed

Current NPG RSS Feeds

Nature Science Update Nature Materials Update Nature Signaling Update NatureJobs editorial NatureJobs jobs British Dental Journal TOC Other TOCs coming soon…

All in RSS 1.0 format

RSS Highlights

Publishers: Sends more people to your content Greater range of potential uses than email

embedding in third-party web pages

Readers: Allows greater control than email Can be easily aggregated and filtered to create

custom feeds

Usage Drivers

RSS

Urchin

Overview

Urchin

A software framework for aggregating, filtering and displaying information from RSS news feeds

Conceived and designed by NPG New Technology, funded by JISC

Core code released as open source and available from: http://urchin.sourceforge.net/ (v0.9)

Urchin architecture

Urchin database

General news feeds (BBC, NYT,

Yahoo!, …)

Scientific news feeds (NPG,

Science Daily, Medscape, …)

Local NPG content and databases

Information ‘scraped’ from selected web

pages

‘Breaking news’ alerts

Keyword-specific RSS feeds

Personalised news pages

Subject-specific news

General Science home page

Filtered General Science home page

Ways to filter Urchin output

Boolean keyword queries: Easy and intuitive but limited to preset fields

Full RDF querying: More involved but allows filtering on any metadata

Breaking news (experimental): Automatic identification of recently popular phrases

AGGREGATE bbc Microsoft AND (security OR virus OR worm)

Select ?item From ?item->nj:advertises{?job} Where ?job->nj:city = 'Cambridge'

Select ?article From ?article->dc:creator{?author}, Where ?item->dc:creator{?author} And $item->rss:link =

'http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/427005a'

Recommendations

Maximize inbound links Spread linking hooks as wide as practical

and as targeted as possible Partner with A&I services Partner with Search Engines Explore new technologies Experiment with new business models

Thank you!Contact information:

Howard Ratnerh.ratner@natureny.com

www.nature.com

Good Resource: RSS: A Primer for Publishers & Content Providers

by M Moffattwww.eeul.ac.uk/rss_primer