The Journal Science App Reviews

Update: the December 2015 update now lets you zoom but only at one level. Free zooming still not possible. Still no landscape on iPhone. Zooming not possible, you need a magnifying glass to read. Must give 1 star worth none.

Longtime subscriber to Science, looking forward to reading issues on the iPad. Unfortunately, I cannot access my subscription on the iPad. Multiple requests to AAAS for help ignored. App is useless.

A dud with a long way to go. The app is slow, prone to crashing, clumsy to navigate, slow to update each page, displays low resolution images of the print magazines layouts, and provides no content enrichment or display creativity. It provides links to "share" via mail or social media, but the option is lame: it links to a pay wall, and even then links to print pages, not to individual articles. Evidently AAAS doesnt get that the strategy of sharing via social media is to drive traffic to a web site on the strength of content, which then can be leveraged to sell subscriptions and products. As it stands, only subscribers can see any anything on the app or via "shared links," and even then only after first providing account credentials. How very disappointing. With their transfer from Zinio to the Apple Newstand, there is sadly no alternative other than using a web browser to read the online copy. AAAS is clearly clueless about the iPad/tablet publishing revolution. This is an embarrassment for a flagship science publication, to be so behind and so inept in adopting and taking advantage of modern technology and electronic publishing platforms.

The download of a full PDF of the journal is an improvement over the earlier versions. However, downloads that size can be very slow on an iPad. This version works more like an electronic form of a paper magazine--reinforcing a linear model. The earlier version often seemed to hide parts of the paper issue from direct access through the application.

I am a big fan of the digital/mobile version of Science Magazine. But as others have noted, this new platform is much worse than Zinio. It is clunky, download speed is astonishingly slow, and page navigation poorly implemented. I wish AAAS had done more extensive user testing before making this move.

The move from Zinio has proven to be very poorly implemented. The decision seems to have been made more for reasons of increasing revenue than for the opportunity to provide a better user experience. The app is slow, both to load new content and to switch pages especially when going backwards. Pages can be bookmarked but there is no way to edit the title so unless I can recognize the pages content from the thumbnail the bookmark has minimal value. Content sharing as currently implemented is essentially useless. All in all I am extremely disappointed as I had high hopes that AAAS would do a much better job.

Congratulations to AAAS for creating their own app, allowing us to shift from Zinio. Too bad the AAAS version is so extremely slow and buggy. The Zinio app was simpler, did less,but was, by comparison, far more reliable and user friendly. For example, it never shifted pages suddenly for no reason. Further, Zinios page finder at the bottom of the screen was much easier to use than this apps. Try again, AAAS.

Basically, the app loads the PDF version with few extra fancy functions. The PDFs are not as fancy as the digital magazine of National Geographic in iPad; notwithstanding, the full texts in the Magazine is all I expect from a scientific journal. This is good enough. Im satisfied with it.

I was pretty excited about this app, but I cant actually access my subscription with it. I have an email logged in, but Ive only had it work twice. Most of the time I log in but it wont let me open anything. Ive had it for around 6 months and keep trying it in hopes that itll work, but as I said before, Ive only been able to download an issue twice.

I was excited about this and switched to an electronic subscription. You can download a pdf but can not zoom in enough to read on an iphone. So this is basically useless on an iphone. Maybe ok on a bigger screen.

What good is a reader that does not provide AAAS members access to Science?

Well that was a waste of bandwidth. If you have an existing Science subscription, you cant read here without repaying. Nice.

This is a very bare bones implementation for a journal of sciences caliber. Its essentially just a pdf reader. You download each issue as one large PDF, and can read by article. There are some great science journal ipad implementations out there, I hope science improves their version, and lifts their game. The other science reader app is just not very good either.

Even though I am a paid subscriber to Science, I am unable to access content on this app. I can login on the ScienceMag website, and I was hoping that this would be a better optimized iPad reader. Instead, it is just a waste of time. AAAS needs to get their security and authentication worked out and needs to deliver a state of the art reader. Embarrassing for a large and well funded organization to be so inept with technology.

This app delivers a pdf of the magazine. It is very cumbersome on both an iphone and a Kindle Fire. I sure hope they get it together to offer a reader with a scalable font.

Im so very disappointed with this application. Im a paid subscriber, and have been for many years, but I am unable to sign in to my account and access articles through this application. How unfortunate, because the other Science application also wont let me access the journal. Its ironic that a science publication cant figure out how to publish a decent application, right?

I cannot access this app as a paid subscriber, which is the same problem as several other reviewers have had since APRIL 2014 ! What an absolute embarrassment to the USs premier science magazine.

First time Ive used this, it seems to work well. As noted, its mostly a pdf reader but it gets the job done. Allows me to read offline, in airplane, etc. However, the Nature journal app has done a much faster and elegant implementation.

This journal delivers great content and I really enjoy reading it. This app is an absolute insult to how great the journal is. I cant access anything as a paying subscriber. This app definitely needs a major overhaul to bring it up to par with the standards a journal of this caliber should be at.

I have been a subscriber for years and similar to others, I cant log in. Very disappointing.