At Pubget we host our code base on GitHub because of its simplicity, reliability, and great web interface. The extent to which we depend on GitHub is far more than as a convenience, but as the backbone of our engineering team.
Consequently, when GitHub doesn’t have all of the features we need to do our work as efficiently as possible, it’s not just an annoyance, but a source of friction for the entire organization. To grease the wheels of our daily workflow, we’ve begun building a suite of “GitHub Extras” in the form of a Chrome Extension (we’ve also used the API to add tags when we deploy!). Our focus thus far has been on the Issues tool provided by the web interface, upon which we have now added the ability to upload attachments or include a screenshot from any open tab.
What does this mean for our organization? When our product team completes a new feature spec, it’s a simple one-click to upload the Word doc to a new issue for the dev team. While testing internally and a page renders incorrectly on Internet Explorer, it’s a two-second task for the QA team to grab a snapshot of the offending site and create an issue for it.
As we say, “time saved is time spent coding,” and we love to code!
Download the extension here.
Learn more about our dev team workflow here.
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.
How many coffees does it take to make Pubget?
About 50 business days ago we got a new coffee machine. It has a neat feature that it actually counts all the coffees it makes. The number today was 1483. This means, it takes about 30 coffees a day!
Big news! Our iPad app is now available to download from the App Store. You can get it here(for free).
The app combines our streamlined paper access technology with the iPad’s portability. Use the app just like pubget.com to find and save your papers. Unlike other apps on the market, you do NOT need to build a library of papers first, because it comes preloaded with 30 million science papers that you can access with your library’s subscriptions.
It’s important to mention that the Pubget for iPad app was made possible by our collaboration with Sigma Life Science to develop the app’s concept and bring it to you. Learn more here.
App Features:
- Search everything in PubMed, ArXiv, JSTOR, IEEE and more
- Access your library’s subscriptions: it’s synced with 450 libraries world-wide (and growing!)
- Immediately get the full text PDF through your library
- View PDFs inline (no link-outs or dead-ends)
- Save papers offline
- Type and save notes for specific papers
- Search complex queries with Advanced Search
Happy Searching!
Use Zotero? You can now open any saved citation in your Zotero library as a PDF via Pubget.
First, make sure you have downloaded the latest version of Zotero. You can get it here. To learn more about Zotero, click here to go to their instructions page.
Directions
To open citations from your Zotero library as PDFs via Pubget, follow these quick steps:
1. Click on the Zotero icon in the bottom right of your internet browser.
2. Select the locate arrow icon, then select Manage Lookup Engines.
3. The Article Lookup Engine Manager window will open. You will see that CrossRef is already setup as a default.
4. Select Toggle, to activate the Pubget Article Lookup (you will see a check mark appear next to Pubget Article Lookup). If you are using a PC, you will need to select OK.
You can close this window now: you’re all set up.
From here on, you can easily open your Zotero citations as PDFs via Pubget.
1. Just highlight the citation you want in your Zotero library, then select the locate arrow icon.
2. Select Pubget Lookup from the drop-down menu, and the PDF will automatically open in Pubget.
We’re pleased to announce the new Pubget Mobile! No other mobile application gets you to the full text of research faster. It’s a big leap forward.
