Glossary

Glossary: RSS, Atom, OPML, alerts, ISSN, DOI, open access and more

41 terms from feeds, scholarly publishing and web sources, definition first, with where each concept shows up in Vite Research.

• RSSRSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a web-feed format: an XML file a site updates whenever it publishes something new, so a reader can fetch it and show the newest items without visiting the site.
• AtomAtom is the other common web-feed format, standardised by the IETF (RFC 4287).
• RSS 1.0 (RDF)An older RSS variant built on RDF.
• OPMLOPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) is the file format readers use to export and import a list of feed subscriptions.
• Feed readerAn app that subscribes to feeds and shows their new items in one place: Feedly, Inoreader, NetNewsWire, Thunderbird, or the Discover stream in Vite Research..
• Table of contents (TOC) alertA notification a publisher sends when a new issue of a journal is published, listing its articles.
• Advance online publication (AOP)An article published online before it is assigned to an issue.
• Ahead of printThe same idea as advance online publication, used by medical publishers such as Lippincott and BMJ..
• ISSNThe eight-digit International Standard Serial Number that identifies a journal.
• eISSN and ISSN-LA journal often has two ISSNs, one for print and one for the online edition (eISSN).
• DOIA Digital Object Identifier, the persistent identifier of an article registered with Crossref or DataCite.
• PreprintA manuscript shared publicly before peer review, on a server such as arXiv, bioRxiv or SSRN.
• PostprintThe accepted manuscript after peer review, often deposited in a repository under an embargo..
• EmbargoThe period a publisher requires before an accepted manuscript may be shared openly..
• Open access (gold, green, hybrid, diamond)Gold: the journal publishes everything openly, usually for a fee.
• Article processing charge (APC)The fee an author or funder pays to publish an article in open access.
• DOAJThe Directory of Open Access Journals, a community-curated list of more than 23,000 open-access journals.
• OpenAlexAn open index of scholarly works, authors, sources and topics maintained by OurResearch and released under CC0.
• CrossrefThe DOI registration agency for scholarly publishing, with an open metadata API.
• h-indexA journal (or author) has an h-index of h when h of its works have been cited at least h times.
• Impact factorClarivate's proprietary journal metric from the Journal Citation Reports.
• CiteScoreElsevier's journal metric based on Scopus, computed over four years.
• Peer reviewThe evaluation of a manuscript by other researchers before publication.
• Indexing (Scopus, Web of Science)Whether a journal is covered by a citation index.
• Saved-search alertA database feature that re-runs your search and notifies you of new matches by e-mail or, on PubMed, EBSCOhost and ProQuest, as an RSS feed..
• Citation alertA notification when a specific article is cited by a new one, offered by Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science by e-mail..
• Web highlighterA browser extension that lets you select text on a web page and keep it marked, usually with a note, a colour and tags, and find it again later..
• Web annotationA highlight plus a comment attached to a specific passage of a page, anchored so it can be found again when the page is reopened..
• Source cardIn Vite Research, the record of one saved source: its metadata, a snapshot of the page, quotes, notes, monitoring settings and the citation generated from it..
• Web snapshotA stored copy of a page as it was on a given date, so the source can be read and cited even if the live page changes or disappears..
• Content hash (SHA-256)A fixed-length fingerprint computed from a file's bytes.
• Link rotThe decay of web links over time as pages move or vanish.
• Wayback MachineThe Internet Archive's public web archive, which lets anyone save a page now and browse old captures..
• Evidence packIn Vite Research, a zip export of selected sources with a manifest of per-file SHA-256 hashes, a printable report, a bibliography (.bib and .txt), the cards as JSON, the quotes as CSV and the change history.
• Citation style (APA, MLA, Chicago)The rules for formatting references.
• BibTeXThe reference format used with LaTeX: a .bib file of entries with fields such as author, title, journal and year.
• RISA plain-text reference format with two-letter tags, exported by databases and by EndNote, Zotero and Mendeley..
• CSL-JSONThe JSON representation of a reference used by the Citation Style Language, the open styling engine behind Zotero, Mendeley and Paperpile..
• Reference managerSoftware that stores references and PDFs and formats citations: Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote, Paperpile.
• Quick captureIn Vite Research, the shortcut (Ctrl+Shift+S in the extension and the web app) that saves a note with tags and attachments into your Thoughts workspace without leaving the page..
• Anchoring (XPath)How a highlighter remembers where a passage sits in a page so it can re-mark it later.