ReadCube Blog

2013-05-02

ReadCube Articles, now on eLife!

By now, we imagine that many of you have heard of (or even published in) the new, open access publisher eLife Sciences.

We’re pleased to say that as of right now, the eLife journal is officially supported in ReadCube an Enhanced PDF! You can enjoy this functionality in the desktop app—simply make sure you’re using the latest version, and you’ll be good to go.

But that’s not all! If you’re reading online, you have the option of reading eLife articles in our Web Reader. Simply click the “OPEN” link in the “Reference tools” panel, and choose ReadCube. Hyperlinked references and authors, mentions, and Altmetric integration are now just a click away:

Let us know which journal sites you’d like to see us on next!

Happy Reading,

Team ReadCube

2013-02-06

We’re so Wil(e)y!

If you haven’t already heard, today is a big day for ReadCube!

We’re proud to say that we’re officially rolling out our Web Reader on Wiley Online Library!

That’s right, you’ve seen us on Nature, you’ve seen us on Frontiers, heck you’ve seen us just by searching Google. And as of right now, you’ll see us on 109 journals on Wiley Online Library, with the rest to come in the first half of this year.

Just click the Enhanced PDF button when it’s presented on Wiley Online Library, and you’ll get great content from Wiley, plus all the Enhanced PDF features that you love to Wiley Online Library, including hyperlinked references, clickable authors, and the article information page, which is jam-packed with additional information.

So, give it a whirl, enjoy it, and tell your favorite journal that you want them to use ReadCube too. Who knows, if you ask loud enough, they might even be next!

Happy Reading,

-The ReadCube Team

P.S. There’s a press release here, if you’re into that sort of thing…

2013-01-15

ReadCube, now on Frontiers!

We’re thrilled to announce that as of today, ReadCube is officially integrated into all Frontiers journal pages!

This means that all Frontiers visitors now have the option of reading any of the peer-reviewed, open access articles from Frontiers as a ReadCube Article, powered by Enhanced PDF technology! Check out this article as an example, or watch the quick video below for a walkthrough of all the features available from this new integration:

We’re thrilled to be working with Frontiers to enhance the reading experience for their fantastic scientific content, so drop us a line and tell us what you think!

Happy Reading,

The ReadCube Team

P.S. If you like reading press releases, our official announcement is here.

2013-01-11

Founders’ Message: A look back at 2012

What a year for ReadCube!

First, let us thank you, our ReadCube Community, for such loyal support this year, and great feedback! Your questions, comments, and suggestions have been a crucial force in driving the development, and we can barely contain our excitement about what we have for you in the year to come.

This year marked many major milestones for ReadCube, but a few of our favorites were:

Bringing the Enhanced PDF experience to the desktop, and enhancing more than 10 million articles
Taking our first step into making literature more affordable, both forinstitutions, and the general public with ReadCube Access
Creating the ReadCube Bookmarklet, our new way to streamline the process of getting articles into your library.
Rolling out our new and improved Web Reader, packed with new functionality to make the reading experience even better.

With that in mind, we’re planning to outdo ourselves in 2013. We have tons of exciting developments planned, but here are a few that we’re really excited about…(read on!)

2012-12-18

Happy Holidays!

We love the holiday season here at ReadCube HQ, in no small part because it generally signals the arrival of presents!

So, we’re thrilled to let you know about our holiday gift to you, the latest ReadCube update. This update carries a few key features that you, our dedicated fans, have asked for:

We’re excited to announce the public debut of the ReadCube Bookmarklet. Adding articles to your ReadCube library from your web browser is a snap, just click the “Add to ReadCube” button!

Purchased articles now have their own list in the left-sidebar. Also, ReadCube now lets you know if you there are any articles that you’ve purchased, but not downloaded, and can syncs them for you.

You can use the new Connectors pane in the preferences menu to choose the search engines you’d like enabled for searching, finding metadata, and identifying imported PDFs. Plus, we’ve added Microsoft Academic Search as a search engine

Finally, there’s now a simple citation export - at long last, you can choose an article in your ReadCube library, and choose the cite option in the right-sidebar. Pick a style, and formatted citations will magically appear! Consider this a preview of our fully-fledged citation tool (and plugin for Word), coming next year.

As usual, we’ve also jam-packed this update with performance improvements, optimizations, and bug fixes, so your ReadCube experience should be smoother than ever. Let us know how it goes!

Happy holidays, enjoy some time off (and maybe a holiday feast), and we’ll see you in the new year!

Best Wishes,

The ReadCube Team

2012-11-16

Mmmm, crunchie!

Every year, researchers compete for grants to fund their experiments and further their quest for discovery.

Here at ReadCube HQ, we too are deep in competition, though of a different sort. Startups like us vie for recognition and awards, and we need your help!

If you love us (and we know you do!), show your support and nominate us for the Crunchies Awards in the category of Best Education Startup. Voting just takes a few seconds, and you can do it once a day. So, next time you’re waiting for the bus, taking a coffee break, or waiting for seminars to start, drop us a quick vote. It would mean the world to us!

2012-10-25

Open Access Week!

Greetings ReadCubers!

This week is Open Access Week, a movement promoting immediate, unfettered access to peer reviewed publications in science. There’s a lot of interesting dialogue going on, and we’ll be highlighting some of our favorite bits on our twitter account, but we thought the blog was a great place to give you all a little Open Access snack!

So, check out some significant open access papers that are available online as ReadCube articles:

Read about the ENCODE genomics project in an open access Nature article.
Read about the latest in cancer genomics through this characterization of squamous cell lung cancer.
And for an element of quirkiness, see just how much dogs are distressed after the earthquake and nuclear disaster in Fukushima. Woof!

Until next time,

-The ReadCube Team

2012-10-16

Mark it!

Hello world!

We’re pleased to release a new update to ReadCube into the world today. It comes jam-packed with the usual optimizations, tweaks, and bugfixes, plus a couple of new features.

Check out what’s new!

A collapsible left-side panel: After many requests, we’ve finally added a button to hide the side panel, giving you extra screen real estate for reading your articles.
A few new options in preferences including an option to disable the ReadCube helper app and an option to alphabetize your lists.

And finally, the feature we’re most excited about…

Whither the monograph?

(Image: NMC Second Life via Flickr)

Monographs, or mid-length scholarly works longer than an article but shorter than a reference book occupy an interesting position in the taxonomy of publishing formats. These 100,000-word middle children have long been extolled as an ideal format in the humanities, and their publication vitally important for the achievement of tenure by authors.

More recently, the format has been on the endangered watch list and a hot topic of discussion at conferences about the future of academia. The big question seems to be: will formats like the monograph disappear and be driven to extinction?

2012-10-11

Happy Birthday ReadCube!

(Image Credit: Will Clayton via Flickr)

It’s been a year!

That’s right, we released ReadCube into the wild for the first time on October 11, 2011. It’s been an awesome run so far, and we’re super excited about all the new features we have in store for the near future.

Stay tuned, lots to come!