BrowZine

I use BrowZine on the iPad format. The program was formally a good usable platform for reading journals. However, in the past several months, it has become almost unusable. I primarily use it for reading the New England Journal of Medicine. Formerly articles downloaded in a matter of seconds, now it takes up to one to two minutes for each article to load. Formally I was required to sign in one time to start a program session, now I have to sign in frequently. Scrolling is much less intuitive or reliable than it once was and I am periodically thrown out of an article which I’m reading and have to start the reloading process again. this makes for a very frustrating user experience. After filing the above review the BrowZine programmers did get in touch with me and did help me work through some of the interface problems. It turns out that the BrowZine interface is a little different for each institution which has its own internal formatting and requirements. Although not perfect, the user experience has certainly improved.

Love this app and its ability to help me follow new articles across journals. The unread view is something I just discovered and has changed my workflow significantly for the better to quickly review new articles in press and across issues. 5 stars, essential for academic medicine.

I have been using Browzine like it’s my Sunday morning paper for about a year now. Until the latest update, I was very happy with the app and encouraged my friends (fellow grad students) to download and use it. I could even easily send papers to my friends if it looked like something they would be interested in. Alternatively, when a paper seemed very useful to my research, I found it incredibly easy to export the pdf to Zotero for reading and taking notes. It was an awesome, smooth experience. I’m not sure what happened with the latest update. I now have to repeatedly log back in, have to decide whether I want to read the article’s html or see the pdf before previewing it, and when I send a paper to Zotero, it will not send the pdf. These problems have made using Browzine on my iPad cumbersome. I wish I had the old version where none of these problems were happening. Until the next version, which will hopefully fix these issues, I’m no longer encouraging people to download it on their iPads.

Now if I have to re-enter my passwords, and sometimes the article cannot be found. Please fix the bug.

I began using this app again to access a range of journals I (should) read. Super fast access to quality titles organized in an accessible taxonomy presented in full PDF. The updates have been terrific. Solid, consistent delivery year after year.

In my last year of my PhD and wish I found this sooner! Definitely helps keep up-to-date on the literature. Much better than my workflow using Feedly.

Since the last update opening articles brings me to my library login page and won’t let me actually login. Help, please!

Worked well for a while. Now all it does is load blank pages when I try to open an article.

I love this app - it’s sleek, easy to use, and has many of the journals I typically cite. Unfortunately for the past couple of weeks, I haven’t been to access any articles. When I try to open an article it says there’s an authentication error. I can still access everything normally through the browser version, so I’m thinking something changed in the latest app update? Looking forward to the next update to return to normal, thanks :)

This app is a great way to read the journal at my campus library. My only gripe is it’s still really slow to load each article. Speed has improved in the recent release, but I still twiddle my thumbs while waiting. Why can’t it download a whole journal at once? Or download several selected PDFs while I’m reading the first one?