Should there be an app for scholarly journals charleston2014

Editor's Notes

• #2: Thank you all for making your way beyond the Francis Marion! I need to apologize that the abstract for my presentation was overly ambitious. I won’t be talking about e-books on mobile devices, with their entertaining Digital Rights Management and Adobe Digital Editions frustrations. Obviously that would be a fruitful area to explore. Instead, I’ve investigated and will present today and in the conference proceedings, the current state of scholarly journals on mobile devices. And, I will gather your input and advice and post that in this presentation on Slideshare and in the proceedings.
• #3: Why do we care how scholarly information is displayed on mobile devices? The Pew Research Internet Project (2014) Mobile Technology Fact Sheet reports that 83% of the 18-29 age group owns smart phones, and other surveys show higher numbers. Pew also reports tablets are owned by 42% of adults. Published studies by many libraries (Barnett-Ellis & Vann, 2014; Caniano & Catalano, 2014) report that students want to use their phones to access library resources. And they don’t just mean the catalog! We have mobile-ized our Library web sites and publishers are trying to rise to the challenge, too.
• #4: Just for fun you might check how well your Library is meeting the need for mobile-ready web sites. There are easy-to-understand standards, guidelines, and training at the W3C World Wide Web Consortium, headed by Tim Berners-Lee and all the titans of the high-tech universe. Every book and article on the topic of designing mobile sites, including everything I found on the topic of designing library web apps and mobile sites refers to these standards (W3C, 2014). The W3C (2010) mobile validator allows you to paste in a web address or even a segment of code to test how mobile-ready it is. They also have a cross-walk between the mobile-ready and accessibility standards.
• #5: Assuming users can navigate to your scholarly journals using your Library’s mobile-ready site, let’s find out how publishers are managing to deliver that scholarly content to your phones. Publishers, hosting services, and aggregated database providers employ three strategies for delivering scholarly journals to mobile devices. 1.Native apps designed for apple and android devices, including thousands of individual journal apps, and third-party apps that host multiple journals, such as BrowZine and Flipster. 2. Web apps or mobile-specific sites that launch when a mobile device is detected 3. Responsive design that resizes the layout depending on the detected screen size
• #6: What about you? You are a library user! As libraries have converted their print journal collections to online journal collections, we have been forcing online journal browsing and reading to electronic devices. Let’s find out how that works for us.
• #7: I investigated the top 25 Library & Information Science Journals. The list is a combination of the top titles reported in several studies, including Manzari’s prestige study (2013) Nixon’s (2014) study that combined prestige and citation rankings, Xia’s 2012 study that includes open access journals, and my own study of the most highly-circulated library and information science journals. I included one outlier, Chronicle of Higher Education, which was mentioned in several studies but generally thrown out as off-topic. I assumed it would be highly read, so decided to include it, too. Publishers and hosting sites include Emerald, Taylor&Francis, Elsevier’s ScienceDirect, Wiley, University of Chicago/JSTOR, deGruyter, SAGE, Highwire, and MetaPress. One thing to note: yes these journals are all available in online formats. I tested their mobile-readiness using my sort of old iPhone, and my non-standard tablet, an iPad mini. Might as well give the vendors a challenge!
• #8: I’m hoping that the study I did includes the Library & Information Science journals you read. But let me find out! Please respond to this simple poll at my poll everywhere account PollEv.com/lindawobbe OR text 1115929 and your message to 37607
• #9: Three of the four are iTunes Newsstand apps. One, College & Research Libraries is open access, and can be used through BrowZine. None of the Library and Information Science journals I investigated are available on the Flipster model. I’ll mention Boopsie, too. Boopsie offers mobile integration of catalog, LibGuides, and some aggregator content at the moment, but none of the Library and Information Science publishers I was investigating.
• #10: Authentication: Except for the open access case, you need a pre-existing account created on the regular non-mobile site. The example is a JASIST article from Wiley. For Wiley/JASIST, you need to enable roaming under your profile on the regular site, which expires after 3 months. Wiley says they have apps for all of their journals, but I didn’t find that to be 100% true. Platform: Two of the apps are only for the iPad, so can’t be used on a phone: Chronicle of Higher Education & Library Journal Functionality includes lots of features; readability is perfect for the newsstand apps.
• #11: Libraries can subscribe to BrowZine and make journals from about 100 publishers available on a mobile device including Emerald, Elsevier, deGruyter, Highwire, SAGE, Taylor & Francis, Wiley, plus many open-access publications. Authentication is straight-forward, using standard credentials, functionality includes what you most expect to see, and off-line reading is possible after downloading an issue. The example is a C&RL article on my iPhone. The focus is scholarly journals, so American Libraries, Library Journal, College & Research Libraries News and Chronicle of Higher Education are not scheduled for inclusion. Search is not a current feature.
• #12: 36% of the top 25 Library & Information Science journals studies employ a mobile-specific site, or web app. That includes Taylor&Francis, as my colleague here described, Emerald, Highwire, SAGE, JSTOR, PubMedCentral and Highwire. The example is SAGE Journal of Information Science on my iPhone.
• #13: Authentication: How would you know what the authentication method is? Pairing can be overly complex, and expires. These are SAGE’s instructions, Journal of Information Science; though I found SAGE to work perfectly without pairing after signing in on the regular site using library credentials. We have authorized the mobile domains in our EZ Proxy tables. Platform: Some that do launch the mobile site on the iPad shouldn’t, as it isn’t sized properly Readability: pdf’s can be opened in iBooks for off-internet reading; and shared, printed, emailed, with all the iPad’s functionality
• #14: Readability:on left: PubMed Central Journal of the Medical Library Association, right to left, many page turns to get through an article Readability: pdf’s can be opened in iBooks for off-internet reading; and shared, printed, emailed, with all the iPad’s functionality; on the right, Emerald Journal of Documentation on the iPad mini
• #15: Functionality: Highwire: C&RL News on iPhone; T&F: Collection Management on IPad Functionality: pdf’s can be opened in iBooks for off-internet reading; and shared, printed, emailed, with all the iPad’s functionality
• #16: Here are standard features available on iPhones and iPads that you can take advantage of.
• #17: 48% of the journals studied are hosted on sites that employ responsive design. This includes open access journals American Libraries and D-Lib; Wiley, Project MUSE, deGruyter, Elsevier and MetaPress. Sometimes the response isn’t appropriate for the screen. The example is American Libraries, admittedly, it is an Open Access title, displaying strangely on my iPad mini.
• #18: Small laptop screens, like a MacBook, are sometimes detected as tablets. A small tablet, such as an iPad mini, is sometimes detected as a smartphone. This results in some silly experiences. On left: Elsevier Science Direct Journal of Academic Librarianship on iPhone and D-Lib on iPhone with 1/3 of the screen devoted to ads, navigation or sponsors.
• #19: Societies and associations, though, have their own authentication protocols. The description of ALA’s protocol reveals quite a convoluted process. Once there, though, in this example, is a nicely readable article from ALCTS’ LRTS , which is hosted on MetaPress, on my iPhone.
• #20: Some nice designs, and functionality. Wiley search screen on my iPhone. Journal of the Medical Library Association, hosted on PubMedCentral, on my iPad mini.
• #21: Aggregator apps still exist, though they aren’t widely promoted. The EBSCOhost app is available for either iTunes or Android. After authenticating at the regular site, click the iPhone and Android Applications link, and enter your email address. The Gale Access My Library College Edition is available for iTunes and Android. Use your college email address to register. All three vendors employ responsive design. EBSCO’s and Gale’s responsive design worked well on either of the test devices ,although Gale’s html articles are restricted to a slim column. ProQuest’s site is usable, but very small on an iPhone, but fine on the iPad mini. On the left is EBSCO results screen on the iPhone. On the right, is Gale html full text limited to a slim column on the iPhone.
• #22: Me too! With most mobile apps and mobile-specific sites, authentication doesn’t work like it does on our full website. With Mobile-specific sites and Responsive Design, devices are not accurately detected.
• #23: Tell the publishers your preference! Please respond to this simple poll at my poll everywhere account PollEv.com/lindawobbe OR text 286313 and your message to 37607
• #24: Questions?
• #25: Thank you to all the researchers who provided such excellent background and statistics.