Nature.com iPhone app updated

Earlier this year I wrote about the Nature.com iPhone application that was released in February. Two weeks ago the app was updated with the following changes:

• Access to abstracts from additional journals: Nature Genetics, Nature Medicine, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Reviews Microbiology, Nature Reviews Genetics, Nature Physics, and Nature Communications.
• Access to full-text articles for a monthly subscription fee ($9.99 for Nature, $8.99 for the other journals). Access to Nature News and Nature Communications is free.

The updated app doesn’t work with the iPad, and the Android version that was announced in February has not been released yet. Users that don’t update to the newest version of the app don’t get access to additional journals, but can still read full-text articles from Nature.

Reading papers on the iPad for me is a lot of fun. The reading experience on the iPhone/iPod touch is very different, and not something I would spend $9.99 a month for. But it is obvious where this is heading: many users (including myself) would probably spend $9.99/month for a nicely done iPad version of Nature. Especially if the content is free/cheaper with an institutional subscription. And we can already read PLoS content for free with the PLoS Reader.

References

Fenner M. Nature.com iPhone app in pictures. Published online February 8, 2010. doi:10.53731/r294649-6f79289-8cw4n