With the vast majority of researchers now assessing and evaluating content on screen rather than in print, we have been exploring options to optimize the online PDF reading experience.

Our answer? The enhanced PDF reader. By the end of this month, you will be able to access the reader on the article page of all ScienceDirect journal articles published in 2017 and 2018. It is the first step towards our long-term goal of improving the PDF reading experience by integrating data and solutions and adding the ability to annotate directly in the PDF.

How the PDF reader evolved

We began in August 2017 by piloting a streamlined version of the new reader with a selection of journals. At that stage, tweaks were minimal; just small additions of functionality and a slight improvement in rendering time.  Now, after months of observation and testing, the full release of the reader offers a much broader range of enhancements, including:

• Inline links providing author information such as recent author publications
• Inline reference links providing a brief article overview/abstract and links to full text in context
• Citing articles, including links to full text
• Recommended articles, including links to full text

The improvements not only help you evaluate and understand content more effectively but provide new options for further discovery.

Next steps

There are further enhancements for the reader in the pipeline; these include annotation and note taking capabilities, advanced content features such as figure and table viewers and tight integration with Mendeley Reference Manager to allow for seamless saving of PDFs to users’ libraries and access to notes anywhere.

The PDF reader will also be rolled out to articles accessed via journal and search result pages, as well as ScienceDirect book content.

Overview of the enhancements offered by the new reader

Click here to search content on ScienceDirect.