This just popped up in the JACS-beta feed in my RSS reader: Mobile TOC Available.

They've created a simple table of contents — see this example for one of their web themed/select issues — that you can more easily view on a mobile device. You can then select the articles that you're interested in, and save them as favourites to your ACS profile. When you're back in the lab/office, you can find them all again.

It's not quite as far as being able to read whole issues on...your iPhone, as The Chem Blog mentioned when JACS-beta was first launched, but for the time-poor chemist, it's a pretty good start.

Thinking about it though, my phone's got an RSS reader built in, so I guess I could get the feeds and mark those I wanted to read for later anyway. However, I still don't think that so many people are actually using RSS feeds (and I don't think a sample of blog readers would be representative!), so they may be more happy using a browser.

Does this innovation strike a chord with you? Is it something you'd use - and that we should ask our nature.com IT masters for?! Are you browsing journals or reading papers on the move already? If so, how?

Speaking of time-poor researchers, chemists or otherwise, I really recommend reading Being Bob Langer from a few weeks ago in Big Nature. He is one seriously busy man - I felt exhausted just reading it.

Neil

Neil Withers (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)