International Journal of Biostatistics

using this site is a little odd! One doesn't know clearly how to find access to an article!

posted by: Nasrin Sayfouri on 01/29/2012 08:01 PM (Europe/Berlin)

Thank you for your interest! I hope we can help here: you can get access to the article by clicking the button "Get access to full text". If you already have access as an individual, for example since you bought the article at an earlier point in time, or if you are entitled to read the article on the basis of any kind of institutional access, you will be asked to log in accordingly and will then be able to read the article immediately. If we can be of any further help, don't hesitate to let us know anytime!

posted by: De Gruyter Online on 02/03/2012 10:48 AM (Europe/Berlin)

I agree that finding articles is cumbersome, and navigating the web site is difficult. For example, as a user, once I have successfully navigated to the IJB web page, I expect to be able to search within IJB by title, author, year, keywords, and any combination of those. Yet if I use the search box on the main IJB page, I find myself searching the entire De Gruyter website. When I instead (counter-intuitively) click on the "READ CONTENT" button, my search options are quite limited. In fact, although I have published multiple articles in IJB over the past few years, entering my last name in the search box and specifying the search be carried out within the Journal/Yearbook yields no results. Substantial improvements in search need to be made if dissemination of articles is to be facilitated instead of obstructed. I also had difficulty with the submission side of things. I cannot find author guidelines for preparing the manuscript. When I click on the link labeled "For Authors" I find a lot of "corporate speak." No, I am not looking for sales, marketing, or to hire an editor. What I would like is a latex template, information about margins, fonts, whether figures should be included in the text or placed separately at the end of the document, etc. It turns out that I have to start the submission process in order to access this information. It's not that this is hard to do, it's just that the user experience is less than satisfactory. I understand that no system will ever be perfect for everyone, however, I hope these comments spur improvements to the website that will enhance scholarship and readership.

posted by: Susan Gruber on 02/06/2012 07:26 PM (Europe/Berlin)

I hope I can help with the concerns regarding our search functionalities: The slot for the quick search in the upper right hand corner is a customary website feature that you can use for searching for publications throughout the whole website. For example, you can use it to navigate to a journal homepage. Once you have navigated to the journal website, what you see is an information overview on all things concerning the journal, for example its aims and scope and other general information. "Read Content" brings you to the content. Once you are in the "content world", you are being offered a "Search within issue"/"Search within journal" option on the left-hand side, above the list of issues, which enables you to search for terms within a certain issue or the whole journal. You are right, there are still a few bugs affecting the "Search within" option at the moment. We are working to fix these as quickly as possible since we share your concerns about this feature being absolutely vital for a successful dissemination of the content! As for the information for authors, you find a link "Online Submission of Manuscripts" under "Additional Information" starting the respective procedure, as you have seen yourself. We are at the moment developing ideas on how to make this even clearer. Your idea to provide the required information one step earlier is something that some users really appreciate whereas others are totally fine with using the subscription tool to find out. But we will definitely take your suggestion into account. So thanks for your feedback, and yes, we are taking all your proposals seriously and do use it in order to improve this platform continuously. We appreciate your help on this!

posted by: De Gruyter Online on 02/09/2012 05:37 PM (Europe/Berlin)