It will be interesting to see whether users opt for simple single-term searches, or exploit the capabilities of the more advanced search engines for complex searching, and spend time refining their searches to get the most relevant articles. Like availability, time is an important issue for readers. SuperJournal offers an alerting service that will change over time. Initially readers can receive tables of contents by email for journals which they select using the Preferences feature. Later they will be offered alerting at article level, based on personal profiles.
Information is recorded on who uses the alerting service, how often, and for what journals.
We can then explore with them whether it does save them time, keep them up to date, and what they do when they receive the alert. Authors will be invited to submit content to accompany their articles in non-traditional formats, eg film, video, sound, animations, simulations, 3D graphics, or data sets. This new content might have been generated as an integral part of the research described in the article, or might be included for illustration purposes. These are examples of facilitators flagged by readers at an early stage, and special care can be taken to ensure that testing is done in these areas. As the research records response to these and other features, a feedback loop is invoked.