Utopia Documents
is a free Portable Document Format (PDF) reader optimized for scientific literature that brings static articles to dynamic life. Instead of merely enabling you to read an article, Utopia connects to a plethora of online resources that help you not only to further explore the article’s content but also to discover related materials. It combines the reliability and convenience of a PDF with the power and flexibility of the Web.
Upon opening an article, Utopia analyzes its content, and links to up-to-date online resources displayed in a sidebar on the right. The exact content of the sidebar varies depending on available information, but can contain:
- A format style-customizable citation, provided by CrossRef
- The Altmetric score, which is an indication of article impact via blogs, social networking sites, and the media
- Links to related articles, provided by Mendeley
- Copyright information, provided by Sherpa/RoMEO
- Related data from an international repository, provided by Dryad
- Drug Discovery information, provided by SciBite
- Laboratory materials, provided by AQnowledge
Utopia promotes additional knowledge discovery via the “Explore” function. This replaces the sidebar’s contents with information related to whatever you’ve selected within the article itself, such as genes, proteins, drugs, diseases, references, etc. These information sources include PubMed, Wikipedia, UniProt, Quertle, and NCBI databases/tools. You can also search for terms and phrases not explicitly stated in the text of the article, such as from figures.
Utopia also allows users to make private annotations to articles, or to provide public comments viewable by all Utopia users. The “Reflect” tool highlights small molecules and proteins discussed within articles, with links to online data and definitions. The “Figure Browser” makes it easier to see the illustrations in an article. You can even interact directly with live data from articles in the Royal Society of Chemistry publications and Biomedical Journal.
You can download Utopia Documents for Windows, Mac, or Linux free of charge. For more information, view the Introduction to Utopia Docs video, read the Utopia publications, or contact the HSLS Molecular Biology Information Service.
*Parts of this article were reprinted from Utopia Documents.
~ Carrie Iwema