The redesigned bmj.com is now more than a month old and this last blog before Christmas is to update readers about the latest feedback and what we are doing about it.
First, citations. A colleague spotted that some older articles were missing page numbers in the citation line. This is now fixed.
Second, section pdfs. Before the new site went live on November 8 most recent articles had two pdf views – one of the article, and second one showing it in its print issue section (this obviously only applies if the article appeared in print, but most still do).
The new site launched without the pdf section version. Again, this is now fixed. Sorry for any inconvenience.
One rapid responder asked why responses now showed in the order in which they were submitted rather than published, which used to be the case. We didn’t plan this. It just happened, and we thought there was a certain logic to it. But if we have to keep a response on hold for a while (perhaps to check that a patient’s consent has been obtained), it won’t show at the top, which doesn’t seem fair. So rapid responses should now display according to publication date, rather than submission date.
Some of you have asked why you can no longer sign up to get an alert each time an article is cited, or if a response or correction is published. We did hope to have this facility back before the end of the year, but it’s proving more complex than we thought. We hope these alerting functions will be back in January.
We’re still getting emails from readers who cannot access data supplements. Please let us know if you experience this, so we can log it as a bug.
And finally….1970. What a year. The Beatles disbanded, the space age was in full swing. EM Forster died. If you’re nostalgic for those times you may be interested to know that for some reason lots of our stories get published with a 1970 publication date, which means they aren’t visible on the automated latest content feeds on the site (eg latest news). We’ve now found a way to solve this, but it can sometimes take an hour or two for them to show.
Thanks again for all the feedback. It’s much appreciated. We have a technical release planned for the beginning of January when we make some changes to our access controls, and there’s lots of things in the pipeline for 2012.
David Payne is editor, bmj.com