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    Keeping links flowing, @PlantCentral gets updated

    Alun Salt
    September 2, 2015
    2 comments
    7 min read

    You can get tweets highlighting new blog posts from PlantCentral account on Twitter, and now it has added links to new journal articles too.

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    You can get tweets highlighting new blog posts from PlantCentral account on Twitter, and now it has added links to new journal articles too.

    I set up the PlantCentral account on Twitter a while back to track blogs I was following. It worked using Yahoo! Pipes, which was a clunky way to run things. When I moved my feeds to Digg, it started to lose track of what I was reading because Pipes were fiddly. The push to move to a better system came when Yahoo! announced they were shutting pipes.

    The new setup runs from NewsBlur to IFTTT to Twitter, so when a new item arrives in my account then it goes to Twitter. If it arrives at 3am, then you’ll be able to see it before I will.

    Running it through NewsBlur means it’s a lot easier to add new sites. I’ve added a folder of plant science journals. One or two you might expect to see are missing, but more than one publisher wants me to sign up for emailed TOCs instead of RSS. Where I could see an RSS feed I added it, so the account shouldn’t really be gaming the Altmetric system for anyone. Journal Articles will have JRNL in from of the tweets, so you’re not clicking and finding it’s behind a paywall.

    I’ve spotted a problem with this set up. It was set to tweet ‘JRNL: «Title» «URL» in «Journal»’ for each article. Of course, if the article title is over 135 characters then you don’t see any URL to click.

    https://twitter.com/PlantCentral/status/638727109947600896

    Now tweets have the URL at the start.

    You can see what I’m currently following below, sadly not in alphabetical order. If you think I’m missing something I should be following, leave me a comment below. You might find it easier to search the list by pressing CTRL+f or cmd+F and finding within the page. What I don’t have yet are feeds for YouTube channels, so that might be the next addition.

    The other addition is semi-cosmetic. It now has an avatar instead of just an egg on the account. I’ve also made it explicit who is behind the account so people know who to contact if they want their blog added or removed from links.

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    Alun Salt

    Alun (he/him) is the Producer for Botany One. It's his job to keep the server running. He's not a botanist, but started running into them on a regular basis while working on writing modules for an Interdisciplinary Science course and, later, helping teach mathematics to Biologists. His degrees are in archaeology and ancient history.

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