Online article formats: HTML vs PDF

This month, IEEE Xplore is starting to make their articles available in HTML format, as well as PDF format, with a view to having this complete for all articles by the end of 2014.

A PDF of a journal article is a great format for printing and downloading, and you see the article in the layout and design in which it will have appeared in the printed journal.

However, the HTML format, provided in addition to PDF by most major publishers, has a number of advantages:

• Use browser functions to change the text size, copy quotations and find keywords
• Navigate easily between sections of long articles
• Explore figures, equations, and multimedia files (something the Royal Society of Chemistry have excelled in with their Project Prospect)