Nature Web Feeds - A New Look
We started publishing web feeds some three and a half years ago and were initially focused on machine-readable descriptions. Then (as now) this meant RSS 1.0 which as an RDF profile allowed for properties from multiple vocabularies to be added into the feed and (crucially) for the feed as a whole to be consumed by any RDF-aware application and for the properties to be added wholesale to any RDF model. We described the reasons behind this choice of RSS format in a paper published by D-Lib Magazine: The Role of RSS in Science Publishing. See the Web Feeds page on Nature.com for a listing of our current RSS offerings.
Since then many other scholarly publishers have followed suit and published web feeds using this strain of RSS. Some publishers, however, have preferred to go with the more widely deployed RSS 2.0 format and by making use of its looser approach to marking up content have embedded rich descriptions in human-readable form. (During this period another format - Atom - has been published as Internet standard RFC 4287 which allows for a more rigorous means of marking up rich content sections although it still falls somewhat short of being a fully RDF-compliant format.)
Back then there was already an RSS 1.0 module available for encoding content ('mod_content') although it was not widely supported by RSS clients. Following a major simplification introduced into that module, which allows for rich content to be encoded as a single property, and with the passage of time, many RSS readers can now support markup descriptions published using the RSS 1.0 format.
So now, to improve the user experience for our subscribers, we finally took the plunge and upgraded our web feeds to provide the best of both worlds: human-readable and machine-readable metadata. Currently this is implemented for our Nature-branded titles, but is being rolled out across all titles. Note also that we will soon be publishing our feeds in both RSS 1.0 format (as current practice) and in a companion Atom format - both formats featuring rich content descriptions for humans as well as for machines. Users can then choose the format that suits their needs best.
See below for a screenshot from the free Awasu RSS client:
Comments
Trying to find the opml for the feeds - could not get to
http://npg.nature.com/pdf/newsfeeds.opml
referred to by http://www.nature.com/webfeeds/newsfeeds.html
working on building subject oriented blogrolls - thanks for the opml!
Rick
Posted by: Rick Silterra | March 17, 2007 07:56 AM
Hi Rick:
Thanks for the feedback. Turns out that that was a link that didn't get carried over in a recent redesign. We fixed that now (and took the opportunity to make sure the OPML file mirrors the RSS feeds listed). The OPML file is now located at
http://www.nature.com/opml/newsfeeds.opml
and is linked to from
http://www.nature.com/webfeeds/index.html
(The link
http://www.nature.com/rss
points onto
http://www.nature.com/webfeeds/
.)
Btw, we're not quite sure where you found the link
http://www.nature.com/webfeeds/newsfeeds.html
If you could tell us we can take care of updating that.
Thanks, again.
Posted by: Tony Hammond | March 20, 2007 12:38 PM
Thank you for comitting to the rss 1.0 standard. Not everything can read the newer iterations of feed formats. I hope the roll-out goes smoothly and successfully.
Posted by: Carl J. Hudson | March 21, 2007 05:41 PM
about the newsfeeds.html - I think I was looking at the error page as I wrote the report - thanks a lot, tony.
I have been experimenting with different feed presentation modes, using grazr for instance.
Now, if we can just get a standard for autodiscovery of opml files.
or how about an openurl request that returns the opml for a publisher?
just my .02 yoctocents,
Rick
Posted by: Rick Silterra | March 21, 2007 11:24 PM
I have scripted a prim in Second Nature that shows the news@nature.com feed. Thought you might be interested.
Posted by: Hiro Sheridan | March 26, 2007 10:45 AM
Hi Hiro,
The Second Life prim that shows the news@nature RSS feed looks great - if anyone is interested, the link to see it in Second Life is here.
For newcomers to Second Life, go to Second Life, sign up for a free account, and then when you get into SL, search for Second Nature to see Hiro's work and everything else we're working on.
If anyone would like to know more, by all means email me, or you can find me in world as Joanna Wombat.
Posted by: Joanna Scott | April 2, 2007 06:57 AM