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.

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 excellent for keeping up to speed on journals that i read when paired with access granted through my institution. Also the user interface is quite past century. Not a big inconvenience but probably not for millennial reader. Competitors rely on a model that takes after other social media sites (think continuous scroll of articles curated using an algorithm) vs this app which relies on the old age phenomenon of getting a physical copy of the journal and taking your time to browse through its content. The reality is that in this day and age modern readers do not like to be tied down to journal boundaries but rather appreciate a curated list of knowledge. It also lacks in identifying the special interests of its readers and then coming up with suggestions.