American Scientist

American Scientist was among the vanguard of publications to develop its own Web site back in 1995. Since then, readers have always had access to the paper magazine’s contents through the click of a mouse, and over the years, the site incorporated other features practical only through the reach of the Internet. In 2002, American Scientist Online graduated from traditional “flat” HTML to a dynamically served site using a content management system. This was a major advance in usability and portability.

At the time, we thought that the matriculation from flat to dynamic was as profound a change as we were likely to see, but that turned out to be only for lack of imagination. Point your browser to www.americanscientist.org today, and you’ll see American Scientist Online, the third generation. This time, what’s changed so fundamentally isn’t the technology. It’s still a Web site served by a content management system using cascading style sheets. Instead, it’s what the site attempts to do that carries it into the next Internet generation.

Sure, you can still view and print the contents of the paper magazine online—including nearly 11 years of archives. Pagination now makes more sense, and you’ll have a better chance of finding what you’re looking for with the Google search appliance that’s now built into the site. But the real change is the site’s ambitions. Rather than being a digital version of the almost-97-year-old paper publication, it is becoming an extension of the magazine’s scope and mission.

We can now enhance articles with digital capabilities that aren’t practical or even possible with ink on paper. Audio, video and podcasts can help us to communicate scientific concepts in ways that change over time and invoke multiple senses. When an article describes motion, we’ll do our best to show it. When sound is the subject, we’ll let you hear it.

There are also major changes in the way that you interact with American Scientist Online. You now have the ability to post comments about current content by simply clicking on the Post Comment link at the bottom of the page. We, of course, still welcome your letters about content—paper or digital—but you now have a more immediate option.

You also have choices about how you would like to receive or be notified about new content. By registering at the site, you create a personalized account called My Amsci. There you can subscribe to our four e-newsletters, choose subject areas or authors about which you’d like to receive e-mail notification (called My Watches), keep a record of content that is of particular interest to you (My Library), and review comments you’ve made on content (My Comments). If you prefer to receive notification of new posts by Really Simple Syndication (RSS), you can also sign up for feeds for all of the magazine’s and the Web site’s content.

The new American Scientist Online is very much a work in progress. We have only begun to tap the capabilities that the new software gives us, and we’ll confess that, at least at this writing, a bug or two still needs squashing. We hope you’ll agree, though, that it’s a giant step forward.