Reading journal articles on tablets - Getting close to Nirvana?

Watch this video -
Why you ask?  What does it have to do with reading articles on tablets?
Just watch it, and it will all become clear at the end!  If you have the patience to read it all that is.

See 2 recent posts (1, 2) on issues with reading journal articles on tablets.

• Most people want to read journal articles as PDFs
• They may have more convenient access to full text articles at their institutions/work place
• They want to read and annotate the articles on tablets while at home or travelling
• They want to have these annotated articles available from anywhere
• They want to be able to search for and cite these articles when writing papers/blogs etc.

The previous posts covered the first 3 issues listed above.  To close the loop it was important to get these annotated articles back into a searchable library from where they could be cited and for creating bibliographies.

So here is a workflow using a tool called Zotfile which is an extension for Zotero.

What you need

1.  Download Zotero (get standalone version with appropriate connector if you use Chrome or Safari).  The standard version works with Firefox.

2.  Download Dropbox and set up a folder where you would like to share articles between your desktop/s and tablet/s

3.  Download Zotfile

4.  Set up Zotfile to specify a folder where you usually download full text PDFs on your work place computer.

5.  Set up Zotfile to save files from Zotero to the folder mentioned in step 2.

Here is the workflow:

Workflow for sending PDFs to Tablet, and getting back Annotated PDFs from Tablet

 Steps:

1. Learn about an article
1. Feed reader
2. From Social network
3. While browsing/surfing
2. Mark for download to Zotero
1. On Google Reader - Star it, or tag it as Zotero
2. Email link to it
3. Bookmark it using Diigo - put in Zotero list
3. On work computer, go to full text article and download to Zotero
1. This is usually a one click by clicking on the address bar Zotero icon.
2. This will usually grab the related PDF, and also all the metadata like title, journal, authors, abstract etc.
3. You can add notes or tags
4. The search engine works very very well
4. Send article PDF to Tablet
1. Right click on menu item>>manage attachment>> send to Tablet
2. This will send the PDF to the Dropbox folder specified above
5. Read and annotate article on Tablet
1. Open file in Dropbox folder
2. Open with EZPDF
3. Annotate/Highlight/add notes
6. Retrieve annotated article from Tablet
1. On Zotero right click item >> manage attachment >> Get from Tablet
2. The annotated article is saved in Zotero library
3. The annotations are extracted and saved as a separate item
7. Write and Cite
1. This works like most other bibliography tools
2. In addition, you can grab a bunch of citations and drag and drop into Google Docs.

So does this really work? I have tried it for a couple of days and it seems to work.  Here are some screenshots.

1. Once configured, ZotFile adds a "Send to Tablet" and "Get from Tablet" menu items to Zotero

Extracted annotations and highlights from the article linked to the citation

Article on Social Intelligence Hypothesis retrieved from Tablet

A quote from the article highlighted (Highlighting was done on Tablet)

 Why did I use this article as an example?  Remember the video you watched at the beginning of this post?
I had just read this article and was struggling to understand it.  The article mentions using the Prisoner Dilemma and I had meant to read up on it.  Then I saw a tweet by @courosa regarding this incredible video and it became very clear.

Thus it was in fresh in my mind as I was writing this blog post.

How do you Organize Apps on your Tablet?

As we all multi-task our way through the day, we now have tablets (and smartphones) to increase the fragmentation of work and information.

In the past, I have used 2 browsers to separate work and non-work tasks.  Thus one set of tabs would be opened to the work sharepoint site, Google Docs and work e-mail for example.  The other set would be open to G+, Twitter, FB, iGoogle, etc.

With the introduction of the tablets, we had to find a way to integrate them into our workflow.  Since tablets, especially the early versions did not have an easy way to keep different apps open and toggle between them, the easiest way to approach this was to organize the apps on different screens and in appropriate folders.

One problem with using folders is having to remember which app was in which folder which adds an additional step to what should be an efficient process.
Another problems with touchscreen devices is that if you take too long to flick/swipe your finger across the screen, it is interpreted as a click - which can result in opening an app you did not want to.

So how can one organize one's tablet screens to get the most efficiency?  I think there is no right answer and all of us can learn something from how others do it.  So to start the conversation going, here is how my Motorola Xoom is set up.

I set up my screens based on related tasks.  Thus there is a work screen, a fun screen and a social media screen and there is a widget screen.  A number of apps are present on more than one screen.  There is a space in the center of the screen to flick/swipe your finger without opening an app.  The widget screen is like a dashboard showing the current weather with alerts, unopened e-mails and appointments for the day.  It has too much personal information on the screen to post a screenshot.  The other screen shots are displayed below:
So how do you organize your tablet screens? 

"Work" screen

The Work Screen:

• Google Docs
• Dropbox
• Box
• Evernote
• E-mail
• PowerNote
• Contacts
• Documents to go
• Calendar
• Skype
• Google Voice
• Widgets to lock screen, turn WiFi and Bluetooth on off, short cut to settings
• Downloads shortcut
• Iris (Voice command)
• Google Voice search

Social Screen

The Social Screen:

• Social Networking tools
• Google+
• Twitter and Tweetdeck
• FB
• Path
• Reading Tools/with intention to share
• Google Currents
• Pulse
• News 360
• Google Reader
• Read it Later
• Kindle
• Play Books
• Buffer
• TED
• BBC and NPR
• OverDrive

"Fun" Screen

The Fun Screen:

• Camera and Video Tools
• Camera
• Gallery
• VidTrim
• PicPlz
• Instagram
• Screencut
• Movie Studio
• Skitch
• Travel tools
• Trip Advisor
• FlightAware
• Translate
• Yelp
• Babel Fish Voice
• Local stuff
• Cleveland.com
• WeatherBug
• TV Guide
• Music stuff
• Pandora
• Play Music
• TV stuff
• YouTube
• Netflix
• IntoNow
• Sports stuff
• Endomondo
• ESPN score center

Reading Journals in the Era of Tablets

I recently wrote a blog post on why readers don't use their tablets to read journal articles.  There were several possible reasons.

1. Wanting to work with PDFs rather than HTML
2. Difficulty annotating the PDFs on tablets (not knowing best tools for this)
3. Hyperlinks may not work in PDFs
4. Wanting to flip between a citation# in the text of the article and the reference in the bibliography.  This is easier to do on paper.

The workflow that might meet most of these needs (except #4 scroll to bottom for a work around for this):

Model workflow for annotating Journal PDFs on Tablets

1. On you Desktop/Laptop
1. Get table of contents and abstracts of Journals sent to my Google Reader via RSS feeds
2. When you want, you get the full text of the article and save to Dropbox
3. Journals are now increasing providing PDF with OCR which allows for highlighting.  If the PDF cannot be interpreted as text by the PDF reader, then the words cannot be highlighted, or the hyperlinks will not work.
2. On your tablet
1. Use EZPDF which is a full featured PDF reader and annotator.  It has some awesome features like:
1. Highlighting
2. Adding notes
3. Drawing free text
4. Adding arrows, circles or rectangles
5. Night more (background becomes dark and font is white)
6. Text to speech - actually reads the article for you.
2. Go to Dropbox on you tablet and open the PDF with EZPDF
3. Start reading and annotating (Long tap).  
4. Choose not to make a copy of the article for annotation. Annotate the original in Dropbox. This will leave the annotated article in Dropbox as opposed to another folder on your tablet

This is a video of how to use EZPDF on an Android tablet.  There are more details on a blog here by Sleepless Ninja

The annotated PDFs are stored in Dropbox which has pros and cons.  This is good because the library automatically syncs with all your computers.  The negative is the inability to use this library to cite when writing an article or when creating bibliography.

The alternative work flow that supports citations and bibliography is to use something like Zotero.  Since Zotero introduced the standalone product that works with Chrome and Safari in addition to FireFox it has become even more attractive.  There is a tool called Zotfile that allows connecting your Zotero library to Dropbox and syncing with the tablet.

I have not explored Zotfile yet but I love Zotero so look out for an update in a future post.

Add:
If the journal does not have hyperlinked references in its PDF format, go to the HTML format and check if these are available.  If they are, then use Adobe Acrobat to create a PDF [File>>create PDF>>from web page>> enter URL
This will maintain all the hyperlinks that are in the HTML version.

Academic Journals - will you read them on eReaders and Tablets?

I recently became involved in redesigning the web presence of a journal of a national academic medical society.  The company tasked with the web design process conducted a small number of interviews with current and potential journal readers.
They interviewed 3 people, with various backgrounds, training levels and interests in technology.

Some of the responses on these interviews were quite interesting and maybe surprising.  Here are two opinions that were quite unanimous.

1. Everyone wanted to have the ability to download articles as PDFs.
2. None of the respondents (wanted to) read the articles on a mobile device (even a large screen one like a tablet).

As I was pondering about this, I saw a piece about eBooks and whether they impact learning negatively. The article discusses how one uses one's visual memory to link information with its location in a text book and why this can help recall.  You can read the piece on time.com at http://healthland.time.com/2012/03/14/do-e-books-impair-memory/.
I had a great discussion on this article with some folks over on Google+.  The piece also has a nice video of how people use visual channels to remember information.

This morning I saw a presentation by Michael A Mabe,CEO of International Association of STM Publishers recorded at the UKSG 35th Annual Conference in Glasgow, March 2012.  I found a link to this talk on posts on Google+ by 2 folks who are thinkers and terrific curators on information in my areas of interest - Bertalan Mesko' and A.J. Cann. The presentation discusses what researchers and readers want in their academic publishing and why these needs have led to the current format of the print journal and why technology has not made much of a change in this format.

Just to make matters more interesting, I remembered reading a piece by Clay Shirky on Social reading.  I had saved it to my Evernote and I dug it up again. It is titled "How we will read" and you can find it here http://blog.findings.com/post/20527246081/how-we-will-read-clay-shirky. 

Clay talks about how when he used to read on the original Kindle it did not have e-mail to distract him.  He mentions Nick Carr and the use of Frost's quote as a book is a "momentary stay against confusion".  He talks wistfully of the times when he was bored and the importance of boredom as a way to recognize the 

gap between what you are interested in and your current environment.  But he moves on to discuss the benefits of annotating on his new Kindle and the value of social reading.

Maybe with evolution of the appropriate apps on mobile devices and as readers experience them, we will change our habits? Here is an image from @gtuckerkellog describing his workflow for reading his scientific literature on tablets.  TechCrunch has an article about how Netizine might be a solution.

Where did I read the Clay Shirky interview?  On Evernote app on my Motorola Xoom of course!