iPhone Apps for the Scientific Literature

There is no shortage of useful apps for scientists.  From compasses to calculators, the iPhone/iTouch has become a very useful tool for many scientists.

An increasing number of scientific literature producers are now offering Apps to let you search and read the scientific literature.  Here are a few:

 

iPhone sunset in the Andes, courtesy of Flickr user Gonzalo Baeza Hernández

 

• Nature.com – Free – From Nature Publishing Group, the folks who bring you the journal Nature.  You can search and browse journals, and read articles for free (until April 30, 2010).
• ACS Mobile – $2.99 – From the American Chemical Society.  Browse and search across all ACS publications, get the latest news items from C&E News, and read full text articles for institutional subscribers via institutional WiFi or VPN.
• PubMed On Tap – $2.99 – One of several applications available for searching PubMed, this app allows you to easily view PDF documents from PubMed Central and email them to yourself for future use.  Advanced searching techniques are also supported.
• arXiview, ArXiv, ArXivReader – $0.99, Free, $0.99 – Multiple apps allow you to search papers deposited in the arXiv.org e-print repository for physics, math, computer science and quantitative biology
• iResearch – Free – Browse and search journal articles from American Institute of Physics publications.  Access articles via institutional subscriptions.  Download articles for offline reading.
• IOPscience Express – Free – Browse and search articles from the last two years from Institute of Physics publications

While there are a lot of useful apps for geologists, including a host of statewide geologic map applications, I can’t find any apps to search the geoscience literature.  In addition, there are notable gaps from some of the big science publishers including Springer and Elsevier.

Update (5/5/2010): Scopus (the citation database from Elsevier) now has an iPhone app.  They launched a “lite” app a couple of weeks ago, and so far I can’t find a paid app, but I’m guessing one might be coming.