How to follow any journal with RSS (and why it beats e-mail alerts)

Every major publisher offers a feed per journal. Here is where the feed address lives for each platform, how to add it to a reader or to Vite Research, and what an RSS feed does that an e-mail alert cannot.

What a journal feed is

A feed is a small XML file the publisher updates every time the journal publishes an article or a new issue. A reader fetches it on a schedule and shows you the new items. Unlike an e-mail alert, a feed does not fill your inbox, can be read from any app, keeps working when you change e-mail address, and can be exported in bulk as an OPML file.

Where the feed address lives

Elsevier (ScienceDirect): take the journal's ISSN, remove the hyphen and use rss.sciencedirect.com/publication/science/{ISSN}. Validated on 677 journals.
Wiley: use the online ISSN in onlinelibrary.wiley.com/feed/{eISSN}/most-recent. Validated on 248 journals.
Taylor & Francis and Routledge: the journal code from the address in tandfonline.com/feed/rss/{code}.
Nature Portfolio: nature.com/{code}.rss, or the journal's web-feeds page for the advance-online feed.
SAGE, Science, ACM, ACS, Annual Reviews: the Atypon pattern …/action/showFeed?type=etoc&feed=rss&jc={code}.
Springer: link.springer.com/search.rss?facet-journal-id={id}&search-within=Journal&query=; the address answered our automated check with a verification page, but readers usually get through.
Oxford, Cambridge, JAMA, Lippincott: copy the RSS link from the journal page; the addresses contain ids you cannot guess.
Anything else: paste the journal's homepage into the Feed Finder. It looks for the feed link most sites advertise in their page head and validates it.

Add it to Vite Research

Sign in and open Discover in the left menu.
Click Add feed, give the feed a name, paste the address and pick a category.
New articles appear in the Stream. From any article you can highlight it, save it to a project or a space, or bookmark it for later. Feeds are free and unlimited.

Add it to any other reader

Feedly, Inoreader, NetNewsWire and Thunderbird all accept a pasted feed address. Field pages on this site offer an OPML file with every validated journal of a field, so you can import a whole discipline at once.

When a feed goes quiet

Publishers change their platforms. If a feed stops updating, check the journal's page for a new RSS link, or run the address through the Feed checker. This directory re-tests every feed monthly and marks dead ones.