As a reader of the PJ (both on-line and in paper format), I miss a clear table of contents on-line that indicates the contents of the paper journal, and which would provide links to the on-line material posted to pjonline.com.
The lack of this simple, yet effective, mechanism to allow quick scanning of the journal's weekly structure is infuriating. Please consider bringing back a table of contents for your readers. A quick straw poll at work indicate I am not alone in preferring this aspect of the old site pharmj.com, even if pjonline.com is improves on the old site in many other respects.
Thank you for your feedback
Thank you for your comment. The PJ Online team welcomes feedback on the new site and you are not the first person to raise the issue of a table of contents.
The new format moves the content of PJ Online forward from being simply an online version of the printed publications, and we are confident that once members become familiar with the new site, great benefit is to be had from the features it has to offer.
However, we are constantly working hard to improve PJ Online in response to users’ needs and in January we will be developing a new feature that will allow users to see in a single list what has been uploaded in the previous seven days. We would value feedback once this feature is available to determine whether it satisfies your needs.
Francesca Rivers
PJ Online support
Solution does not address the problem
Dear Francesca
Thank you for your reply. However, I am a bit confused by the phrase "moves the content of PJ Online forward". It certainly moves the PJ, but not forward. We do not have an effective record of what appeared in the PJ and when. Nor do we have an easy mechanism of scanning the current contents. While the new format is suitable for sites that exist as a online resource only (such as Onmedica.com), it is less than satisfactory for a publication that continues to exist in a paper format. It is perhaps worth revisiting the definition of a journal.
While I aknowledge that the new site brings benefits, I fail to see how the loss of a feature can be considered a step forward. The proposed solution only partly addresses this problem. I had largely abandoned retaining my journals following the start of pharmj.com, but now find that retaining the paper version is the only mechanism to maintain the table of contents.
Perhaps if the PJ is no longer to behave as a Journal, in the true sense of the word, then perhaps it ought to remove the word "journal" from its masthead to reflect its transition from a paper version to a primarily web-based product. I am not a stick in the mud when it comes to the internet (I have run a personal blog since 2003), but I do feel that as the primary journal of our profession, the PJ should maintain some of the qualities of a journal, while moving forward with the times. An example might be the BMJ, which manages to remain interactive, while retaining the nature of a weekly journal.
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Anthony Cox
Bring back our table of contents