Scientific Journals on the go! The use of mobile applications in health, continued!
A few weeks ago, we had discussed whether about mobile applications used in public health. Today, I would like to share with you yet another very interesting use of mobile applications, which I found thanks to twitter and -of course- thanks to iMedicalApps website.
Did you know that more and more scientific journals now make their content available digitally for iPADs or e-readers? Highly regarded journals like the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine are offering such applications and the complete list of journals doing it is longer than you might have thought!
This list is quite dominated by medical journals and I could only identify a couple of Journals that could be considered to be covered under the wider umbrella of Public Heath, namely the Health Affairs Journal (which also has a blog, by the way) and the Journal of Community and Health Science. It seems that some of the applications offer basic use, such as downloading PDFs, while others allow more interaction to users.
Are you using any of the above mobile versions of scientific Journals? Or would you be interested in using one? What difference would this make to your daily life as a student or researcher?
It really is great living in the digital age.
Good to hear you again. Your discussion about the inecarsing flows of real-time digital information was interesting. If you are looking for a backlash, I’m happy to provide one! (Along with Mills, I suspect.) Maybe I’m just still resistant to an assumption that the new reality necessitates some loss of control over the information space, as you mention (though the sense of loss of control over my time makes me even more grumpy). In fact, the thing I have always loved most about the Internet is how it untethers me from needing to be in a particular time or place to accomplish some task whether it’s shopping, finding information, communicating via email, etc. For me, Twitter, texting, status updates, etc. reverses this; it’s like going back to a time when people sat waiting by the phone in case a call came in. (The fact that people can now take their phones with them doesn’t make it any better, in my opinion.) Bottom line, unless and until we have better tools to manage this information I think it’s incumbent upon anyone sending out important information whether individuals or institutions to be respectful of the fact that not everyone is (or wants to be) hanging on their every word as it issues forth.Alright, rant over