Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Ebook Reader for Scientific Papers?
An anonymous reader writes "I love the idea of getting an ebook reader primarily for reading research journal papers. However I've heard bad things about the handling of PDFs on the major ones. I don't particularly care for color, but having an e-ink display and the ability to handle PDF/PS docs without conversion would be a major plus. I'd even be open to a hacked Kindle running Linux if it were practical. Does any good solution exist?"
A few months ago I found the Asus Eee Note (some folks even figured out how the software works and got it to run other Qt apps), but my hopes were dashed when I learned they had killed it before it even arrived in the U.S. It seems right now that this particular niche is not being served: or is it?
The iRex illiad is pretty good. I think you'd find an ereader useful as long as you're trying to read straight through some document; if you are doing a lot of flipping back and forth to say reference an equation that was on a previous page you'll find it tedious. The pages just don't load fast enough for that.
The kindle can read pdfs without conversion, although if your going to read a lot pdfs, I'd probably go with the DX model.
Kindle DX and read the articles sideways
metageek
I don't have much experience with different e-readers. Just noting that from my personal experience with the Kindle's default handling of PDFs it isn't very good for scientific papers. Diagrams especially don't come out well, and occasionally stuff isn't rendered correctly (although that issue has become nearly non-existent with the new Kindles and the upgrades. I don't know what they did but presumably improved stuff somewhere). I have friends who have had good experiences with the iPad, and for diagrams it is quite nice. You can easily rotate them or zoom in or out using a very intuitive interface.
I've had no issues with PDFs on the Kindle, whether the DX (which is the right form factor), or the 3 (which is conveniently portable). It's not a perfect solution, but it works.
IMO, the optimal solution would be a hybrid display (like Pixel Qi make), a form factor halfway between the DX and the 3 (i.e. roughly the screen size of a normal book), and running an Android OS so apps can be written to support things like DJVU. I had high hopes for the Adam (Notion Ink, http://www.notionink.com/), but they're a little too ... grungy ... for me to be willing to spend $600 on.
The built-in PDF reader on the Nook Color is decent. It drains the battery faster (maybe 2x or 3x?) than reading epub files but is still quite usable. I've only ever had trouble with one PDF: there was one page with a TON of overlaid vector images and it wouldn't render correctly; all pages after that page were missing images entirely. Otherwise it's been a fine machine.
I own a Kindle DX, it is good enough, but for heavy PDF nothing beats an iPad with Papers 2
Just use a printer and let them pile up on your desk. When you finally get to finishing that paper, they'll be there, somewhere!
www.itjerk.com
I used to have the Kindle DX. I bought it so I didn't need to carry a bunch of paper or books around with me. But I soon found, that it was VERY annoying for using as reference or reading papers on. Jumping from page to page with the clicky buttons was very slow and you couldn't do any side-by-side comparison. Not to mention, if the PDF or whatever is an Image PDF, it takes a decade to load. I just went back to paper and books, can take notes in the margins, highlight easily, do side-by-side comparison and easy reference by keeping bookmarks and flipping between pages faster. Maybe its just the method Amazon uses to render the screen, but I didn't like it for those purposes. Others might have a different opinion than me or a better solution (which I'd be glad to hear since I hate carrying all my books, etc around).
The Barnes & Nobel Nook Touch is a touchscreen e-ink reader running Android 2.1 Eclair. It has been rooted with Google Apps installed: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1132693 . You can download ezPDF or Acrobat reader through Google market. I have a Nook Color, the color LCD version of this running Android 2.2 Froyo. It renders scientific papers quite well. I don't have direct experience with the Nook Touch, but I imagine the experience would be similar.
Dont go for a eink tabled, it will never work until they have eink at full colors
Besides, ipad wpnt need a lamp if you want to readat night, I have a little insomnia problem and my nights are much better since I buyed my wife an ipad, you can stay at bed reading without much trouble until you get sleepy again.
Im not a fanboy, I actaully work on a linux laptop/desktop 100% of the time, but the itouches ar one great thing comming from apple, just jailbreak it :)
I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
I don't know what your discipline is, but I think it'll depend on what journals you typically read.
I'm a chemist, so a lot of what I read is from the American Chemical Society. Most of the articles are formatted for a big (bigger than letter size) with two column format. It's a big of a squeeze down to letter paper, but you can still read it.
I've got a Kindle DX and I find the ACS journals are just too small when fitted to the Kindle DX's viewable area. It's suppose to be able to show a letter-sized document in full but that's only if it has "standard" margins. Most journal articles don't have those standard margins. I personally am hoping for someone to market a 13.1 in diagonal e-reader which should be able to show a letter-size pdf in the full. Delta's eMagzine fits the bill but no commercial companies have brought it to the market.
If the article is one-column or manuscript-style, it should be easy to read on most e-readers but I would stay on the large size because of things like diagrams and small indices in equations.
I don't know of any readers that do postscript.
This doesn't specifically respond to your e-book specification, but Skim on the Mac is amazingly useful for reading PDFs. It has extensive notation and mark-up abilities. I use it exclusively to read technical papers and also use it exclusively to review journal manuscripts that are sent to me.
Get an iPad and Papers Touch. It seems to be what you need. http://www.mekentosj.com/papers/touch
I was so looking forward to the KNO device for this very reason. :(
but it didnt quite make it to usefulness
The ipad and goodreader is my current default but the screen is really just a little to small for
tech/scientific docs.
the asus eee pad transformer has promise but battery life sucks.
there are some flip screen laptops that are nice but again short battery life and quite spendy.
Ive been looking for years for such a beast but technology and demand arent there yet.
s
If I could walk that way I wouldnt need cologne.
May not fit your desires, but I have been very happy with my first gen iPad + iAnnotatePDF. Combine that with Dropbox, BibDesk (with auto-file), and I now have a database of all the papers I have read / want to read + annotations + all highlighted text searchable.
Not much is known about him, except that he's unknown, and a lamer.
Ob. topic, I've only tried a Kindle and a Sony something. The Sony could display PDFs remarkably well for its tiny size (there are bigger ones from Sony, though), and had a touch screen with a stylus you could use for scribbling. E-ink is far better for reading than any traditional screen.
process of science is to enhance the knowledge of all humankind, why bend to the device that seems to refute and diminish the enhancement of mankinds knowledge?
in summation: while sometimes cumbersome to pack, and lacking in search features, the technical and scientific papers and books I employ to do science have never stepped intentionally in my path to prevent me from learning or understanding the knowledge they contain.
until "e-ink" and the 700 page book on my desk are indistinguishable in terms of functionality and accessibility, i say to hell with kindle, nook, and the lot of them.
Good people go to bed earlier.
For PDFs you need a big screen. None of the small screen e-paper readers will do, and judging by my phone, nothing less than a 10" tablet will do either.
All we real scientists swear by it.
Lets you read color PDFs, edit them, and access all the scientific journals and notate them.
Nothing less works as well.
Plus it's like 10 pounds sterling.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I've been thinking about the sorry state of document readers for a while and have surmised that there are several places where the current software is lacking.
Content and document layout analysis
Scientific writing is by nature highly structured. So far, I have not come across anything that takes advantage of that and pulls out the semantics of the text. For example, I would love to be able to click on a citation and have that open up either my browser to look it up or grab the document from storage. Other places where the software could improve is in the automatic generation of table of contents if there isn't one or in the recognition of a floating figure/table along with its caption and then allowing the reader to zoom to just that part of the document.
Annotations
As I am reading, I must have the ability to take annotations easily and quickly. These annotations must be exportable and editable on any of my other devices. The annotations must be able to be searchable and cross-referenced with other documents and annotations.
Interoperability
Each e-book reader use different databases to organize their data into categories or mark a document as read. This should really be open. Furthermore, why is it that I have to plug my device into my computer to transfer large numbers of documents? Why can't I use the LAN to control that particular aspect? I want to be able to search for papers on my computer then just sit back and read through a couple of papers. Having to manage files breaks my flow.
Other areas for improvement include organization of large libraries of documents, bookmarking (down to at least a paragraph level), and the ability to view multiple documents (or different parts of the same document) at once.
I have the Galaxy Tab myself, and really like it, but I've also played with an Eee Transformer and was very impressed. I previously had the Xoom, and it was okay, but it's screen wasn't as good as the former two. The 10.1" Android Tablets have higher resolution screens than the current crop of iPads (1200x800 vs 1024x768), meaning a slightly higher DPI, meaning slightly easier on the eyes for reading.
Honeycomb gives you lots of flexibility as to how you get PDFs on to the device (e.g. via Dropbox, local file transfer, etc) combined with the freedom to then view those PDFs with the app of your choice. Android has a version of Adobe Reader, which while feature light, is pretty much guaranteed to correctly render any PDF you throw at it. For my own purposes though, I typically use RepliGo, which handles most things, is notably faster, and lets you view and add notes in PDFs.
No eink, and at this point I'd probably wait for an iPad with a higher-resolution screen, but I've been reading maths papers and books using GoodReader for almost a year now and it works quite well. GoodReader is fast, handles large files well, and has a "persistent crop" feature that's worth its weight in gold: for any given document (and, optionally, for facing pages), you can crop the margins, eliminating the very annoying "turn the page and zoom" phenomenon characteristic of my experience with other readers.
What others have said about "reading straight through versus skipping around" is quite true, alas: I find myself buying hard copies of any books that I reference heavily for exactly this reason.
PRS 950 screen (7.1") is far smaller than the Kindle DX (9.7"). For reading letter/A4 sized scientific articles, screen size matters.
I own papers but I took it off after getting iAnnotate Pro. Tags and your own arbitrary folder structure, plus excellent searchable annotation that you can share and dropbox support. And I find the actual PDF reader, locking zoom, etc. nicer. It lacks the pubmed integration but with the ability for Safari to transfer PDFs that's okay.
For the story poster, consider an iPad. I tried ebook readers and the inability to scroll smoothly and the flashing when they updated the screen really annoyed me. I prefer to read papers on my iPad to any other way now.
FTA: It seems right now that this particular niché is not being served: or is it?
Why do so many people have a problem with this word? I can put up with the US pronunciation (i.e. "nitch") though I grew up in Ireland and England pronouncing it what I presume to be a slightly French way - i.e. "neeesh"
But how in heavens did we arrive at "niché "??
Backward%20compatibility%20is%20over-rated
I am currently using a Kindle 3 with the Duokan firmware and find the PDF readability much better in terms of the interface. It can also handle ePub, HTML, and DjVU. Possibly more formats, but I haven't tried those.
It has a rudimentary column splitting feature that lets you read the common two-column document format easily without having to continually zoom and pan.
I particularly like that it actually uses the filesystem to browse for documents, so I can organize the files my own way.
It also can play back OGG and FLAC in addition to the MP3s you get with the regular firmware.
Depending on your preferences, you might want to have a look at the WeTab. Since it's based on MeeGo you can install basically any PDF viewer you like (xpdf or evince for a slick experience, Okular if you want to make annotations). And no need to hack it, root access is just one sudo away.
OS Reviews: Free and Open Source Software
I am in the same boat as you. I wanted an ideal portable device for reading PDF documents. Here is what I have tried so far:
1. Barnes and Noble Nook B&W e-ink device. PDFs simply do not look right on this device.
2. Barnes and Noble Nook Color. Slow processor and small screen. Some squinting and patience is required to read PDFs on this device.
3. ipad (1 & 2). Really good PDF rendering and pages turn fast. Downsides are: a) No easy way to transfer documents. Some may consider iTunes easy to work. I do not. b) Lower resolutio and physical size of the display when compared to Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and other similar Android devices.
4. Samsung Galaxy Tab 7". Very portable and reasonably fast processor. Downsides are: a) Battery drains faster than other modern tablets. b) Small and low resolution screen when compared to its big brother.
5. Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. This is my current PDF reading device. I use it quite frequently. Display is excellent. Battery performance is outstanding. There are many ways to transfer documents. I just mount a share over the network and drag and drop content. Messing with cables and another computer etc. for doing this is stupid and Steve Jobs should know it. The only downside is that the PDF reader options on Android are not as good. The built-in reader on ipad is really really good. On Android, you have Adobe reader, that is missing some really critical functionality. For example you cannot bookmark a page. I currently use Aldiko. It is OK. It is a bit slow. And appears to render PDFs not as sharp. Also it acts utterly dumb if you switch to landscape mode. There is no way to tell it to fill the width of the screen. So I mostly read my docs in portrait mode and for that it is quite good. I really like the ability to change brightness level without using menus and moving my finger up and down.
I use this exact combination for reading scientific articles and tech specs (diagrams, formulas, and all!) And it makes a very nice Android tablet for $250. EZ PDF Reader also lets you annotate and mark up the pdfs as well!
iPad is my preferred mobile pdf reader. iBooks app is a free download. Decent days plus worth of reading time. Quality hardware. Decent company backing it up with a good warranty. And not likely to pull the plug anytime soon.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
I get a lot of documentation, magazines and so forth in PDF format. The Kindle DX has worked well for me. Usually I use it in portrait -- the much higher resolution of the ePaper display makes even the small type of Scientific American crisp. Sure, reading on my laptop is more colourful -- but the Kindle can be read in full sun, so reading on a deck chair is very pleasant. I tried a neighbors iPad under the same conditions and found it almost unreadable -- bright sun makes the Kindle even more legible. Most stuff that I download from the web just gets dragged across the usb -- when connected to a computer the Kindle storage appears as a USB disk drive. You will use categories to group the documents into sensible buckets -- but be aware that it is all artifice and the actual document store is just one big bucket. So name collisions could be inconvenient. If the pdf is a scanned document it sometimes helps to turn the Kindle sideways and read in landscape mode. Color would be nice but for 95% of what I read it is mostly irrelevant. The only problem I have had is that some of the two page high density graphics encountered in magazines (Sciam, for example) take a long time to render and if you get impatient something gets lost. Then the only way to recover is to do a hard power-down/reset. My first DX got the dreaded frozen bar disease -- happened quite abruptly for not apparent abuse on my part. I suspect that the ePaper assembly came delaminated somewhere and this broke electrical connectivity. I have the impression that this is an occasional problem of all ePaper displays. Amazon declined to comment but shipped a replacement out very quickly. And the battery life is very long -- makes it easy to forget that this is a little Linux box with a specialized interface. Ultimately it is an issue of taste -- and we all know that in matters of taste we are all quite mad. The Kindle DX works well for me.
You want resolution, so I recommend iRiver Story HD Google Ebook Reader
check out the review(/comparison to kindle) with some info about electronics documentation in PDF format
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXWKOoy20Rs
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
E-ink products will not serve your needs. I'm a grad student in physics, and I tried doing exactly this. I love my Kindle for reading books, but the delay and screen size issues (even on the DX) made reading technical papers, where I often am moving back and forward quickly, frustrating. This leaves aside the difficulties of organization - ereaders are not really designed to have 200+ papers. I suggest getting a tablet instead - the ability to download new papers directly from the tablet is worth the additional money.
The only thing that comes close to an eInk eReader that can handle PDFs well is the Kindle DX ($380). Do not go with a smaller format reader and think you can convert PDF articles to ePub. It turns out really badly - unreadable.
Back when eReaders were the big new thing, many companies were going to come out with a large format reader. PlasticLogic was going to come out with their Que reader, but it was delayed multiple times and cost something like $600. It was dealt a quick and merciful death.
The only sensible options today are the Kindle DX or a tablet. I read plenty of journal articles on my Honeycomb tablet, and it's really not that bad. Certainly not bad enough for me to drop $400 on a dedicated paper-reading device.
Found myself in the same boat a while back. Small-screen ereaders are cheap but rather awful for reading regular PDFs, large-screen ereaders are pricey but you can fit a single page on it.
In the end I went for a Pocketbook 902. They're cheaper than the other 10" ereaders and handle PDF/PS very well, together with a host of other formats and supports wifi+bluetooth. I've read a bundle of papers and a few ebooks on it over the summer and haven't regretted it, in spite of the manufacturer being unknown and the software being 'ok'. It runs on an ancient version of Android but you wouldn't recognize it from the UI.
Note-taking on it is next to impossible though (no touchscreen). If that's a key feature for you you might want to look at their premium model, a hacked DX or the Iliad.
I have a 10" Android tablet too (I splurged on gadgets, sue me) but I find reading on it not a lot more comfortable than on a regular monitor. Reading a quick paper is fine, it's great for couch-surfing and handles anything you can throw at it, but if you're expecting to read for hours on end I'd go for the Pocketbook.
This sig is intentionally left blank
The slow page change in an inherent limitation in current eInk technology, as it has to apply an electric charge to cause small colored balls to move through a viscous fluid to display the image.
LCD screens, be they transmissive (like the iPad), reflective (like the Eee Note), or tranflective (like OLPC one) don't have this problem, and the later two are almost as nice to read on as eInk.
The largest size Sony should do it for you - although perhaps only barely...
It's not cheap.
Beetle B.
3. ipad paired with Mendeley works for me. Mendeley (http://www.mendeley.com) allows you to organize your scientific papers with tags, and share them automatically via the "cloud".
Aside from the Kindle DX, there are only a few companies that make E-ink ebook readers with 9.7" screens, among them Onyx-International and PocketBook. Among the dozens of formats that the Onyx Boox M90 support are PDFs and CHMs. As a software engineer, I use it to mainly hold some reference books. As a comic book fan, I use it to read cbr and cbz files. The screen size is sufficient for reading all Worx and O'Reilly books. It's got a pretty big fan base in Europe and Asia, but not so much in the US. I actually heard about this device from an attorney friend who uses it to hold notes, exhibits, and opening statements. The Onyx-International M90 reader is the only one that is Linux-based (The GUI is QT). The company has a downloadable SDK that you can use to develop application. I heard that there's some games available for download online for it, but I've only played Sudoku on it. Aside from my experience, you should take a look at some online forums like MobileRead and see what others have to say about their experiences with the devices. Also, the M90 can be found almost anywhere, Amazon, eBay, and on their website at onyxboox.com.
I played with the Sony E-reader with the idea that I'd use it for bringing papers to read (yes, it's a Sony, but despite that the e-reader is quite open and format-agnostic).
In some ways it could work quite well: it has a mode that shows you one quarter of the page at a time, which fits very neatly with the typical two-column format. And the touch screen makes it natural to swipe around in the text.
But it has two downsides: it doesn't do color, which makes many illustrations unreadable. And there's no way to organize large amounts of papers - no good way to index them or search them.
Instead I'm going to get an Andy Pad Pro next month. The long format of Android tablets is a good fit for two-column papers. It's the same size as the Galaxy Tab, but with higher resolution screen, and cheap enough that I can justify getting it just as a tech toy even if it doesn't work out as a paper reader.
Which leads me to a question: anybody know of Android software to index PDF files? Or, optimally, a way to transfer papers directly from Zotero, keeping labels and notes intact? Not likely that last one, I know, but just in case...
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
3. ipad (1 & 2). Really good PDF rendering and pages turn fast. Downsides are: a) No easy way to transfer documents. Some may consider iTunes easy to work. I do not. b) Lower resolutio and physical size of the display when compared to Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and other similar Android devices.
You don't need to use iTunes to transfer PDFs. There are several hundred PDF readers written specifically for the iPad. I've only tried a few of them but my favorites are Papers, GoodReader and AirSharing, none of which require you to use iTunes for transferring files. Direct access to servers, including mail servers and dropbox, is common. Did you actually try an iPad?
I use a Kindle DX for that purpose. My experience has been positive so far: It will handle almost any paper I throw at it, no conversion required, most are readable in full page in vertical mode ( some papers will have complex diagrams that will make you zoom & pan to be seen). Although most two-column papers are readable in full page in portrait, many times I turn it to landscape mode to have a better view of the column, and pan trough the document to the bottom of the page.
As other posters have pointed, the DX is kind of slow rendering pages, so if you need to go back and forth frequently while reading or reviewing a paper, you will find it annoyingly slow. For me, it has been fine.
In my opinion, to read scientific papers, the Kindle DX is the device to have if an e-ink display is a must. As others have said, an iPad or Android tablet will make easer and faster to navigate trough the paper, and you will be able to read them in full color (every now and then, depending on your field, you will encounter images or diagrams that require a color display). but the active display won't be as gentle to your eyes as an e-ink reader. So, I think it depends on what is more important to you: the e-ink display or the ability to navigate faster trough the paper.
I bought an iPad 1 about 9 months ago primarily for reading science PDFs. It's fabulous for this.
Papers for Mac is a really great way of organising and viewing scientific papers. For me it was the killer app that made me switch from Linux to Mac as my main operating system.
The iPad version looks great and syncs with the Mac, providing a very nice solution - easily the best I've seen. A number of my colleagues read most of their papers on their iPad using Papers (usually when they're in a boring meeting!). There's also a version for the iPhone for those with good eyesight... I don't know how well it works without a Mac but according to the website it looks pretty easy to get documents in there from various sources.
I had a Sony Daily Edition(?)--the large screen one. While it could display PDFs, it would do horrible things to the formatting. Now I have an Asus Transformer and really love it, especially since the new PDF Reader from Adobe is really pretty good. It's more of a tablet/netbook type thing though, but as an academic at an art school I spend a lot of time looking at PDFs, .docs, and .movs, .swfs and a whole lot of other stuff.
If you need easy access to your pdf's the full size usb port is excellent for hooking up usb hd's or sdhc reader. The built in lumireader works well for pdfs, bookmarking ability but no note taking, but faster than adobe. Adobes reflow viewing works good if formating isn't an issue, i.e., not good for reading formatted code. Not bad for reading comics either. NB, a 4x3 aspect ratio like ipad or hp touchpad might work better for some books, all depends on the aspect ratio of the source material you'll mostly be reading.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Current e-ink screens, while very nice outdoors, are far too small for a scientific paper. Until there is an A4-sized e-ink device you will not be able to use it to read scientific papers. I've found that using a tablet is the best way to go so far. While the screen is lower resolution and not very good outside the advantage is that it updates very quickly so it is easy to enlarge plots, enlarge the text and scroll around the now too-big-for-the-screen page etc. which you cannot do with e-ink.
If they ever release an affordable A4/letter e-ink device which displays PDFs then I'd go for that but until then tablets seem to be the best for scientific papers.
Great farking zarquon! I just took at look at those iPad PDF apps -- $10-$20!!!
When the main purposes are (1) saving your position/bookmarking, (2) annotating, and (3) sending pages/annotations to others, it's a bit hard to justify spending $10-$20 in a $0-$5 app world. The iPad's built-in PDF viewer works just fine, as long as you don't need position saving or annotating (the free Evernote app is decent for saving/viewing PDFs, if you don't need much in terms of features).
My wife is writing her PhD dissertation and uses her iPad for this. She loves it. The screen is nice, it renders the PDFs very nicely, and she doesn't have to carry around a stack of 80 odd journal articles when she's writing.
YMMV of course, but she says it's made her life a lot easier.
Thats the main reason I bought an iPad-2. I read a lot of scientific papers, there is an absolutely fantastic application (Desktop + iPad sync) called Papers, http://www.mekentosj.com/papers/
..., downloads, archives and searches papers, and syncs up with the iPad version of Papers, and automatically creates a bibtex database.
Basically, papers manages all your papers, hooks up to google scholar, ACM,
I tried several readers that I had free access to (Adobe, ThinkFree Office included on the phone, Aldiko) and was not pleased with any of them. Little things like not recognizing that a table of contents actually had links to specific locations were deal-breakers.
I picked up ezPDF Reader from Amazon's AppStore as a free app (normally $2 in Market), but it pretty much just kicks ass. It recognizes links, allows you to display in either text-only or full page rendering, navigates well, and just generally wins. I've been using it with Digging Into WordPress which has quite a bit of very funky layout, and it's been working well. Highly recommended.
fencepost
just a little off
I have been playing with Papers to store journal articles across my Mac and iPad. The software is not free, but has been useful. I have not had time to really make it work, but it has proven useful in terms of citations. It is not made for Android, but there may be similar software. I find the ability to work between devices to be a key feature
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I am a physicist and in my daily job I usually have to keep open and study several papers and textbooks. Most of the documents I study are in electronic format (mostly pdf and dejavu), but paper is still covering a significant part of my desk. I currently use a PC with two large screens, but for looking at my documents I wanted to find something more comfortable and that was easy to carry along my travels (my laptop is a bit too big and heavy, and I am quite tired of bringing it with me). However after trying some ebook readers and tablets I decided that the best thing I could do was to keep my PC/laptop as a reader, and replace the software I used for looking at pdf documents. I switched from Acrobat reader to STDU viewer, it reads pdf, dejavu and other formats, and allows you to quickly open and switch several documents with just a mouse click. I only regret that I don't have a A4 monitor, so I cannot always look at a glance to a full page, however I noticed that replacing the pdf reader greatly improved the way I work.
IMHO tablets and Ebook readed are still very far from being a replacement to printed paper, and I suspect it will take a very long time before we will see a viable alternative.
And a stapler.
Yep, kinda like me - just lamer
It might be a silly question, but what happens when you want to annotate the paper -- you know, highlight an equation or two, draw an arrow to the margin and add your own explanation and so on?
Every end has half a stick.
(I'm not aware of any specific issues relating to scientific journals- my reading is predominantly legal journal articles (usually in .pdf), PDF prints of web articles (converted via Readability), and legislation, cases and the like.)
I used a couple of eReaders (COOL-ER (no longer trading) and Sony), but, whilst these were great for reading novels, or for casual reading, I did not find them of use for reading academic materials - I wanted to make notes, to highlight sections and the like, which neither of the devices I used supported. I also found the delay in loading the next page disruptive, even with getting used to pressing the "next page" button earlier than I'd turn the page in a physical book / journal.
I saw no point in an iPad when I first tried one, but, having struggled along with eReaders (and not wanting to carry paperwork, nor struggle to organise it), I decided to try an iPad, running iAnnotate PDF - and I have not looked back. It is not perfect, particularly given the nature of the screen, and the edges, which make it somewhat uncomfortable to hold, but, in terms of productivity for reading, it has been brilliant - I have read many thousands of pages using it, predominantly via iAnnotate, but, increasingly, for text books, through iBooks.
As well as the ease of reading / annotating on the device, I particularly value the ease of synchronisation, via the PC/Mac server software - I wanted something which could simply expose my directory structure, and the documents within it, so that, if I make a change to a document, it gets synced back, overwriting the original (although this is a preference setting, default is to add a new version), which makes document management so much easier. It works nicely via VPN, so, even if I'm at a conference, I can annotate a paper, sync it back to the server back home, then sync back down onto my laptop. (Perhaps convoluted, but it works...)
I have not tried it myself, but friends have been using GoodReader, so that might be a viable alternative to iAnnotate PDF, if an iPad-based solution was acceptable.
I occasionally still read a paper book, but, since I can get most of what I want in pdf / electronic copy (even if that means buying the paper copy, and acquiring a pdf), that's increasingly rare - I've got through the first year of a masters, studying in my spare time, without any paperwork at all, which has made studying much easier. As long as I've got my iPad, I can study wherever I want, and packing a laptop for writing papers and the like is no chore either - brainstorming / mindmapping software is also useful, along with a simple "paper replacement" writing-on-the-screen application on the iPad, for randomly jotting thoughts down (PenUltimate). Paper no more...
Same use case. Love my Ipad. In a wlan network Readdledoc functions as a wireless file server that you can mount as a regular drive on any os, which is exactly what a caveman like myself who uses plain old file system operations for my document management needs. The downside is the IPad's somewhat clumsy overall file management imposed by the ios.
Lots of you have commented that Kindles just don't have a big enough screen for scientific papers as PDF. When I look at the papers I have next to me, they're all formatted as two columns (so your eyes don't lose track of the line you're reading). So what we really need are scientific papers formatted for e-reader. Are any of the major publishers doing this? (Yes, I know we all have a ton of PDFs, but let's look to the future for a moment...)
We bought 2 10 inch Kindles and 2 10 inch pocketbooks 903s at our lab, to see if we could use them to read academic papers instead of all those dead trees. Also, a colleague had a 7 inch kindle, so we tried that as well. Most papers we read are PDFs in two-column format, so how well a reader can handle that was perhaps the most important requirement.
The pocketbook is quite nice, and is also a very open device (it's linux and you can run scripts on it etc), and it has WIFI. Other than that, the readers are quite similar: they have a two-column mode that shows you one column at a time and moves forward correctly. This works well for reading papers, and the ability to do full text search directly on the reader is very convenient. However, when you have to look at a piece of text and the table or figure it describes side by side, dead trees win. For this, the 10 inch models are better than the 7 inches, because you can turn the text sideways and see the whole width of the paper (for those wide figures or tables).
However, both the kindle and the pocketbook have insufficient features for annotating pdfs: this means they are not really an option for me when working on a draft or reviewing a paper. Furhtermore, I like to scribble on papers I read, so in the end I mostly used the pocketbook for reading novels rather than papers. In the future I think I will keep reading papers on paper until I can get a non-backlit reader that has good support for annotating the stuff you read by scribbling on the touchscreen... in the meantime I'll probably buy a 7-inch reader for reading fiction.
I've been using an ipad + goodreader to view pdfs, and so far it's the single best solution I've been able to find. iPad is a big screen, and goodreader allows you to non-destructively crop empty borders in pages, so you maximize your reading area.
I wanted an e-reader for the longest time, but thought the current ones were way too overpriced. They still are IMO. I almost went with Notion Ink but I read about people having issues with it. Then the ipad 2 came out, and a reseller was selling original ipads for half price. So, iPad it was. :)
Best one is iPad. I tried everything else and the PDF reader on the ipad works fantastically. Good reader is nice but the one built into iBooks renders fast and correct every time.
I did not like the choices on Android, but I have not checked for any new ones in 3 months since I switched to an iPad.
It's not about the hardware, it's about the apps and quality of the apps. and nothing else has goodreader or a better pdf and all other format readers right now.
Now unleash the foaming at the mouth apple haters...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
iPad, in combination with the app Papers, is an excellent portable platform for reading scientific PDFs.
I have an iRex iLiad from 2007 that I use mainly for just that, scientific papers. It's great:
- PDF's look great.
- It's eInk. Much better for the eyes than a tablet if you ask me.
- You can zoom to whichever part you want.
- The screen is larger than in most of the latest ereaders.
- There is a third-party reader that you can install for PDF's with column layout, letting you read in column order.
- The device is free and can work as an USB drive, you can copy the PDF's directly to it or you can plug an USB stick to it, you don't need to care about third-party apps or DRM at all.
- Last but not least, you can underline things and take notes with the wacom pen on the PDF. It's great for going over drafts of your own papers, or by annotating other people's papers.
It's a pity that most ereaders released after that have been a step backwards, not forward, in functionality.
I have (or had) several e-book readers, as well as an Acer A500 tablet. Even if you hack your kindle, nook etc. to install a proper pdf reader, the real problem is their screen resolution, 800x600. At this resolution, technical or scientific pdf files become very hard to cope with. On the tablet you have a 10 inch 1280x800 screen, which works great for pdfs. I agree that e-ink beats the regular LCDs for reading comfort and paper like feel but a good high res pdf capable device with e-ink simply does not exist yet.
The issue is not just if it is good for reading PDFs - you also need to be able to organize the papers, create citations, make notes (and organize them), and most importantly, actually get the PDFs of the academic papers to begin with. The difficulty of this last one varies by field - some fields (e.g., mathematics) have a more-or-less central place to get stuff (if you are affiliated with a university with subscription access). Others require you to get papers from multiple different online sources, which can be a huge pain. I spent a lot of time on this and the only good solution I've found is the Papers application on the Mac + the purpose-built Papers Touch reader application on the iPad. This combination addresses all of those needs in a way that is tailored specifically for someone doing research who needs to review current scientific papers. In addition to being a graduate student myself, I'm the computer support guy in one of the largest departments at a major research university. For some of my users the functionality in this combination is enough to justify the purchase of a Mac laptop + iPad just for this purpose. While not perfect (having to have a Mac makes it a lot less than perfect if you don't use a Mac already, or don't have budget from your institution to support a purchase), it is the best end-to-end solution out there that I've found.
If you are stuck on a PC or laptop, Acrobat now allows you to change the background color of a document you are reading.
It isn't as nice as an ebook reader, but changing the background color from white to gray helps to reduce ( not eliminate ) eye strain.
FYI, if you still want to print those PDFs out you can be much kinder to the environment by printing with less white space in the margins and of course, doing duplex.
Looks cool, but I really have no inkling to look at myself in a mirror while reading :/
I got an Entourage (now defunct) Edge this spring, for reading and reviewing papers. It's a dual table w/ both eInk and lcd screens. In theory, it could be a great review/read tool: you read PDFs on eInk. A nice feature is that you can select a rectangle on the eInk side (e.g. a color figure) and have it shown on the lcd side. Unfortunately, zooming (important when reading two-column papers) is clunky. Annotation is clunkier still.
If you just want to read a scientific paper then any color ebook reader with a decet size would do the trick. But my experience with scientific paper is that I want to write on it and I want to draw on it. So somtehing like a nook won't really do it, you do need surface to write. and you need a stylus. If the screen is not at least 80% of a letter, it won't be useful. I tried an iPad and found it too small.
I have recently bought a Notion Ink Adam for exactly the same reason. The nice thing with it is that it has a Pixel Qi screen, which makes it possible to read outdoors/in direct sunlight, but also a normal back-light mode, to read indoors. I find it absolutely wonderful to read papers/scientific books on. I previously used the Kindle, but I found the refresh time of the screen to be really annoying, as I like to skim large numbers of papers. And that it isn't possible to take notes on a Kindle in a reasonable way really made it rather useless for my purposes. (And then I sat down on it and broke it, making it even more useless.) The Adam is great to skim-read on. I have also bought a small portable USB-keyboard, so I can write longer comments on papers I read, or even write on articles when outdoors. Plus, I can read/write emails, surf and so on. But I must mention that the Adam has a lots of downsides: you pretty much need to have a geekish vain, since the original OS is complete crap (tabletroms.com has a nice pretty stable Honeycomb for Adam, which is great). Moreover, the reflective mode of the Adam really sucks compared to e.g. Kindle, you pretty much have to be in sunlight to see anything. It's quite similar to a Game Boy from 1990. Moreover, Notion Ink REALLY don't want you to buy things from them. Expect ordering time of at least a couple of months, and lots of issues. But I'm really happy with reading scientific literature on mine. Now I only need to buy a waterproof case for it, so I can read while in the bathtub. :-)
I tried to love my Kindle for reference books, but ... it's not there.
First: tables are wonky -- they tend to be images that render poorly on e-ink (FWIW, they also render poorly on a PC and iPhone, so I believe it's at least in part a problem with using heavily compressed images).
Second: the indexes in many reference books are non-functional -- the items are not clickable and, worse, don't have location or page number references.
Third: it's tough to flip back and forth in different sections (colour-coded tape flags are still miles better than Kindle's marks).
Fourth: annotating text sucks on a Kindle compared to paper and pen.
What is my Kindle good for? Novels (I actually prefer reading e-ink over dead tree). Connecting to 3g networks (for free) in foreign countries so I can check my e-mail before I buy a SIM for my phone. I can search references throughout my entire library at once. In a pinch, I /can/ have a complete reference library for brewing in my hand. The first four books of A Game of Thrones is only $10 on Kindle; $20 and 4.4 pounds in paperback.
But for reference materials?
Pass
I bought Papers and was really disappointed with it. I use GoodReader instead. I imagine Papers may be good if you own a Mac desktop plus papers for Mac. On the iPad, I find it difficult to get new papers into my Papers library, I needed to manual correct each paper's metadata, and the annotation capability was nowhere near as good as GoodReader.
The normal Kindle screen is much too small for most PDFs, but the Kindle DX screen is not bad. Both can handle PDFs natively, with some limitations.
Conversion with Calibre or any other currently available software tends to work well for simple, single-column documents without scientific equations, but gives very poor results for scientific papers (believe me, I've tried).