We’ve just made it easier to create and update researcher academic profiles. Now you can automatically update PlumX profiles using RSS or Atom feeds – which news sites, blog platforms and other publishers use to broadcast regularly-changing web content. This feature delivers researchers faster recognition for activity and usage around their research.

Implementing this RSS feed integration allows researchers to track and get credit for the attention their non-traditional output is getting online, for example, when they publish a blog post. PlumX can track the blog post as a piece of research output – similar to tracking an article, book chapter or presentation.

NOTE: This is not to be confused with tracking blog mentions, that is when a blog post references an article or other piece of research. PlumX does that. But, what we are talking about here is tracking the metrics around the blog itself when the researcher is the author. Confusing? Keep reading for an example below that will make it clearer.

How Does It Work?

You can quickly add RSS or Atom feeds as sources of artifacts to a researcher or group in PlumX by entering the URL of the feed. PlumX will automatically add all of the content from the feed, plus new content when it is available. PlumX will then gather all of the altmetrics for each item in the RSS feed.

Now, researchers or administrators have easy tracking for web publications such as online articles, blog posts or posts to news sites. 

Here’s an Example:

Dr. Zamin Stanizai from the Pacifica Graduate Institute in California is a Professor of Mythological Studies who contributes regularly to the Huffington Post.

Step 1:

Dr. Stanizai’s page at the Huffington Post appears like this:

Step 2:

Within his profile in PlumX Dashboards, Dr. Stanizai can add the existing Huffington Post link to the RSS feed to his profile:

Step 3:

The Huffington Post blog posts are then automatically added to his PlumX profile.

Step 4:

With the RSS feed added, PlumX now analyzes metrics for all of Dr. Stanizai’s blog posts, even newly-published ones.

By sorting the Social Media column, you can see that the post, “In Response to a Letter From a Christian Friend” has the most social media metrics, and “When the Prophet of Peace Meets the Profit of War: An Analysis of the Hubris Syndrome of Governance” has the least. (These may change over time.)

Helping Profiles Proliferate

RSS feeds pull in research and continually update PlumX with new content to track. We’re excited about this new feature that helps researchers and administrators quickly create researcher or institutional profiles, and allow them to track and get credit for the attention their non-traditional output is getting online. What channels should we add next? Join the conversation and let us know.