iPhylo: Revisiting RSS to monitor the latest taxonomic research

"Over a decade ago RSS (RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) was attracting a lot of interest as a way to integrate data across various websites. Many science publishers would provide a list of their latest articles in XML in one of three flavours of RSS (RDF, RSS, Atom). This led to tools such as uBioRSS [1] and my own e-Biosphere Challenge: visualising biodiversity digitisation in real time. It was a time of enthusiasm for aggregating lots of data, such as the ill-fated PLoS Biodiversity Hub [2].

Since I seem to be condemned to revisit old ideas rather than come up with anything new, I've been looking at providing a tool like the now defunct uBioRSS. The idea is to harvest RSS feeds from journals (with an emphasis on taxonomic and systematic journals), aggregate the results, and make them browsable by taxon and geography. Here's a sneak peak: ..."