You write a nice magazine. Sure, it's no Nature, but we still read it.
However, each time I download a pdf of your work, it comes with a totally useless front page. This cover page says something stupid about the citation and copyrights of the work (I don't know, I never read it) and then lists other articles I might be interested in**.
News flash, I'M NOT. I'm interested in reading THE ARTICLE I DOWNLOADED, thanks anyhow. And now when I go to print, I have to type in the "pages" field "2-5" or whatever, so that I don't have this useless piece of junk in front of everything else.
Maybe no one ever explained this to you, but pdfs are designed for printing. Yes, they're also nice to collate in your Papers or whatever, but the entire reason Acrobat was invented was so that one could transmit complex pieces without messing up the layout....for ease of printing at the other end. Yet here you have taken this beautiful, simple idea and inexplicably screwed it up by taping on a cover page, like you're a goddamn seventh-grader turning in a class report. Why, why?
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* You too, J Neurophys
** J Neurophys, hilariously/irritatingly, lists Medline search terms on the front page. I recently noticed a pdf where the front page listed "HIV--AIDS" as a relevant topic. The authors were talking about lobule HIV (H-IV) in the cerebellum.
15 years ago
16 comments:
Hmm. I actually like, or at least don't mind, this: it's very occasionally useful and when not, a single click in Preview deletes that page.
Whenever I print off a Science article I am conditioned to take the top page off and toss it in the trash.
And for crying out loud, what is the fricking point of sticking "Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on April 22, 2010" in the margin?!
I know where I downloaded it from!
Why would I care when I downloaded it?
Is this supposed to be some primitive form of anti-piracy protection? So you can prove you got it from the "legitimate" website?
Just give us the paper as it appears in print! Is that so much to ask? It's actually less work for you!
I hate them, too, those odd cover pages. The margin note is probably a copyright thing or so... though I don't see how they will get anywhere with it.
This is my favorite post on this blog, ever.
mmm - complaining about Science's cover page suggests you don't use jstor for older articles.
A cover page plus multiple pages of other articles you aren't interested in at the back.
Last paper I tried to print off there were _8_ pages linking to articles I don't want at the end...
So + cover page, that's 9 wasted pages for one paper on deforestation...
I print double-sided (AS SHOULD ALL OF YOU) so I can't just rip the top page off. I suppose I could instead flip it over before stapling but now we verge into the realm of the absurd.
Ewan, I find Google Scholar or variants thereupon perfectly adequate when it comes to "what papers have cited this paper." Better, in fact, because they don't prejudice in favor of "certain types" of journals.
Anon, the jstor problem is even worse but I'm somewhat more likely to print a current article than an archived one. Also I'm not sure whether Science has any influence over jstor, whereas I'm pretty goddamn sure they have control over their own PDFs.
DJ/MH: not ripping off the front page; just deleting it before printing.
I've managed (to my own surprise) to wean myself from printing, pretty much; these days I find it possible to read onscreen.
The ghostscipt tools are good for taking pdfs apart and doing cruel things to them. I have the "cover page insanity" problem with a large class of internal documents at $WORK so I wrote a script that strips the several-pages-of-waste and leaves me with (gasp!) content.
Both Apple "Preview" and Adobe Acrobat allow you to see the thumbnails of all the pages in the document. Simply select the cover page, press delete and re-save the PDF.
BUT... I just checked the latest version of "Adobe Reader" (the free version) and that doesn't let you delete pages.
What I tend to do:
Delete the offending page(s) after I download and resave. I know this is not always an option depending on your software, computer, etc.
I agree with the Dr. J. & Mrs. H. regarding printing double sided and flipping the first page over so the real front page and abstract are on front. However, I am neurotic about stapling and hole-punching all of my journal printouts (I share a fancy copier/printer/scanner unit available at work. Sadly, it does not make espresso, but wouldn't it be awesome if you submitted several documents for printing and a lovely drink waiting for you at the unit? Sorry for the digression). So if I turn the front page, if messes up my neurotic hole-punching (which is certainly nothing to flip out over).
A third option is changing the pagination in the print menu. That is, if you have an 11 page article with the useless front page, you submit that you only want pages 2-10 printed. It takes some discipline to get into the habit of it, but It may be worth it to find the place on the menu. This method can reduce page waste as well. Printing all 11 pages double sided requires 6 sheets of paper, removing the useless cover page lowers that to 5.
Regarding information in the side column: I hate it with a passion. When I compile a set of notes spanning several journals, I sometimes copy-paste a beautiful sentence or extensive list of items, rather than transcribe it myself as I am a sloppy typer and copy-paste is lightning fast. These effing sideways notes come along for the ride and I have to search for them in my pasted product. Such a pain.
I get that I can delete the page in other programs. But why is the onus on me? If pretty much everybody out there is doing some equivalent, shouldn't these journals, I dunno, quit tacking on the cover sheet? THINK OF THE TREES/ELECTRONS.
DJ&MH says:
"I print double-sided (AS SHOULD ALL OF YOU) "
Why should we print?
hahah, I'm with Hilary, best post ever. My office mate now knows I'm not working from the laughing.
It's so true. And I do the absurd, I always forget to get rid of the first page, so I flip the first page over before I staple it.
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