What features would you expect from an e-book reader for scientific publications?

[Geralt]

I don't know....this guy was pretty adamant about the color. I'm guessing he should know since he studies the damn thing.

But anyway off the top of my head, what about people that study design or art or history of art? Surely they need a little color in their lives? ^^

Or lets go more casually with people who read comics or manga. A4 is pretty awesome size for that use

[medard]

I'm sorry if this has been written before, but a feature that would be important would be the calculation and display of the 128-bit MD5 Hash of a pdf document.

Some universities add the MD5 Hash of their documents to their pages (Example), I'd be nice if I could check the integrity of my document directly on my Sony Mobius deveice to compare it with the source.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by medard

I'm sorry if this has been written before, but a feature that would be important would be the calculation and display of the 128-bit MD5 Hash of a pdf document.

Some universities add the MD5 Hash of their documents to their pages (Example), I'd be nice if I could check the integrity of my document directly on my Sony Mobius deveice to compare it with the source.

I must have read hundreds - possibly thousands - of PDF documents, and I don't recall ever having had a problem with document corruption. Have you found it to be a problem?

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I must have read hundreds - possibly thousands - of PDF documents, and I don't recall ever having had a problem with document corruption. Have you found it to be a problem?

The main purpose is probably not to guard against corruption. What you want to do is being able to check that your copy of the paper corresponds to the original. You need to check that you do not have the wrong version of the paper or a version that have been changed.

[degree6]

Backlighting. Never forget this.

Ability to attach the reader as a drive/directory and freely move stuff in and out of the folders (unlike the brutally difficult iTunes sync system).

Originally Posted by tompe

The main purpose is probably not to guard against corruption. What you want to do is being able to check that your copy of the paper corresponds to the original. You need to check that you do not have the wrong version of the paper or a version that have been changed.

I have to agree with tompe. Scientific papers often go through multiple revisions, particularly if they're being published in a journal, so the signature is a good way to ensure that you're reading the version that you think you're reading. It can also be used to ensure that you're reading an authorized (i.e. not necessarily final, but at least unmodified according to the authors) version of the article. It can protect from randomized corruption, but chances are that randomized corruption would either be rejected by the renderer (if programmed properly) or rejected by the user (if reading carefully).

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by BWinmill

I have to agree with tompe. Scientific papers often go through multiple revisions, particularly if they're being published in a journal, so the signature is a good way to ensure that you're reading the version that you think you're reading. It can also be used to ensure that you're reading an authorized (i.e. not necessarily final, but at least unmodified according to the authors) version of the article. It can protect from randomized corruption, but chances are that randomized corruption would either be rejected by the renderer (if programmed properly) or rejected by the user (if reading carefully).

Thanks. That's a fair point, but I guess I've never worried about that since virtually all the papers I read come from sites such as JSTOR, where one can be reasonably certain that what one is reading is the "original". But I see the value of what you're saying.

[medard]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I must have read hundreds - possibly thousands - of PDF documents, and I don't recall ever having had a problem with document corruption. Have you found it to be a problem?

I'm sorry, this is a missunderstanding.

I was talking about scientific documents that already come with a MD5 Hash. I gave some examples here (in german).

When you talk to a scientist you'd like to make sure that you both have exactly the same document, or you'd like to know if you have exactly this specific document from this specific source. And the easiest way for that would be a comparison of the MD5 Hash. That's why the University of Freiburg publishes them.

It's easy to manipulate a document; or you can have different versions of a document, three different scanns of three different print copies of the same book, for example.

It's possible to manipulate electronic books, actually it's very easy. A kid could do it just for fun. That's why I'd like to see the MD5 Hash of my document in a scientific reader.

[ghero]

I think a good feature for this kind of e reader will be something like "term discovery".
In order to build this feature, first the e reader needs access to a bank of digital scientific journals, papers, publications, and trusted online scientific info resources. And when user selects a term on a paper that he is reading, he can use "term discovery" to get a list of scientific materials that discusses topics relating to that term, which he can either view/pre-view or purchase those materials. Also with such bank of materials avaliable, another feature would be to have AI that reads the bibliography, and automatically fetch cited materials from the scientific material bank or online, and compile a list of fetched materials, so the reader can view or purchase them.

Another attractive feature would be to allow scholars/professors (especially those who are famous and widely respected in their fields) to constantly publish their researches on the digital book store used by this kind of device. And allows a social network style system to let readers to follow them and subscribe their works, maybe even discuss them. (I guess another related feature would be to search publications/papers by author in the digital book store.)

[teh603]

Originally Posted by medard

When you talk to a scientist you'd like to make sure that you both have exactly the same document, or you'd like to know if you have exactly this specific document from this specific source. And the easiest way for that would be a comparison of the MD5 Hash. That's why the University of Freiburg publishes them.

Or it could also be used by unscrupulous professors and greedy textbook companies to force students to keep re-buying the same textbook, because someone changed the color of a sidebar from last week's edition to this week's.

[willus]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The key feature that any device aimed at use by the academic community has to have is the ability to have multiple documents open at once, and be able to rapidly flip between them. ...
Any device which doesn't offer this ability is no use whatsoever for the academic/scientific reader.

That last sentence is a bit extreme. I've had plenty of occasions where I've just wanted to read through and focus on one paper at a time--more often than not, actually.