Be on the look out Boston-area schools, QR codes to download Pubget's new and improved iPad app will be hitting your campus soon.

Just like on Pubget.com, you can quickly search through and instantly access your library's subscriptions and now take them on the go with your iPad!

Wait a minute, why wait? You're already on the computer! Click here to get the app now.

Pubget Sponsors UCSF PhD Movie Series

We here at Pubget know how much serious work is involved in obtaining your PhD but as we have found out humor is just as big of a process! In any case, we're pumped to be sponsoring UCSF's PhD film series this Thursday.

With all the time our research friends are saving by searching on Pubget, they can afford to take a well-deserved break from some intense research.

Free pizza and some laughs, what could be better?

Ever wonder what makes it into Pubget?

Well you can read our official stance below, but here's the short of it.

As the search engine for life science PDFs, we want to index scientific works from journals that have a strong impact on the scientific community. The journals indexed publish papers which represent the advancements in science, and are the foundation of future discoveries. That's why you'll find both the latest issues of your favorite life science journals, as well as papers that represent the foundation of scientific thinking.

Here's our official stance:

Pubget carefully evaluates and selects content which meets the highest standards of scholarly research from varied disciplines and geographic locations. Journals included in Pubget are examined for timeliness, originality and impact of research, and quality of editorial work. Journals included inPubget contain various article formats from literature review to original research and contain mostly unsolicited works and some commissioned works. The journal’s peer review process is stated clearly with an appropriate percentage of accepted manuscripts and require authors to declare ethical concerns and conflicts related to published works. Many journals publish works reporting on nationally or federally funded research and provide a strong contribution to the field.

Journals with articles that are 100% commissioned, contain less than 3 articles per volume, authored works by editorial board members,advertisement connecting articles, or reprints of previously published works are not included in Pubget.

We hope we're able to strike a balance between covering everything that the scientific research community needs, while maintaining a high quality of search results. In fitting with our goal, we are actively expanding our index to include important research for the life sciences and beyond. Are their journals that you wish we indexed? Tell us in the comments or write to us at team(at)pubget(dot)com.

Photos from our first happy hour

Thanks to everyone that attended and we trust everyone had a good time. We also gathered some really cool informal feedback on our service and hope to make it even better.

Please look out for more of these or if you have a suggestion on where to have our next one, please contact us and let us know.

Student newspaper outreach

Some of our student newspaper ads are starting to appear - here is one from the back page of the Columbia Daily Spectator.

A view this week from dev central at Pubget and Chief of Technology Ian Connor.

I don’t know how many of you heard the news out of Princeton last week. And no, I’m not talking about its US News ranking (although go Tigers). I’m talking about the news that the university will ask its scientists to publish only in open access journals. The impetus was apparently to make sure faculty can send around copies of papers they publish without fear of running afoul of a publisher’s copyright.

The event is the latest in a trend toward open access that began in earnest several years ago, when the U.S. government mandated that all research paid for by taxpayer dollars---through grants from the National Institutes of Health, for example---be available to those taxpayers free of charge. A compromise was struck with publishers, whose business models largely depend on charging for data, whereby papers would still cost money to access for a certain period immediately after publication before being deposited in a free government-run repository thereafter. Prominent universities like Yale and Harvard have also undertaken open-access policies. As a result, some traditionally subscription-only publishers now allow authors to designate that papers be open-access from the outset, for a fee.

As you can imagine, we follow these things rather closely at Pubget, because they have a direct impact on how we get you papers. Pubget is already the fastest way to get you PDFs that are open access (we help you get your subscription PDFs faster, too, if you’re at one of our 400+ institutions). But knowing when a paper’s become open access takes a bit of work---and not just for us, but for publishers themselves: because traditionally papers have either been subscription or open access from the start, a world in which different papers in the same journal could potentially be either taxes traditional infrastructure that was built from a journal’s eye view, if you will.

At Pubget, we look at things the way you do: paper by paper. We’ve been working directly with publishers to help them realize our common mission: of letting you get the information you need to do amazing things. But meanwhile, what the news out of Princeton really got me thinking was how much I want to thank all of you out there who have been writing us whenever they find open-access papers that have fallen through the cracks. So, thank you for helping us help you do science at speed.

Pubget comic t-shirt

The now famous, Big Bang Theory inspired remake of the Flash inspired t-shirts have arrived at Pubget.