Jim Karpen Tips

Magazine articles online

May 2000

I like reading magazines. And I also like to consult them when I'm doing research for articles that I write. I am, for example, writing an article about prostate cancer for a national magazine, and although I can find a huge amount of information on the Web, consulting a magazine article is useful because it typically gives an effective overview.

I've often used the web sites of Time magazine and others when doing research. But for years I've hoped for an Internet site that would let me search across a wide range of magazines at once, rather than going from site to site.

Now MagPortal.Com has appeared and gives many of the features that I'd long hoped for-and more. It's a simple yet effective tool for researching magazine articles on a specific topic. There is no indication at the site how many magazines it indexes, nor is there a browsable listing of the magazines. But in doing a search on prostate health, I came across a fairly wide range: Newsweek, U.S. News, Science News, Entertainment Today, Sports Illustrated, Forbes, The Economist, The Scientist, Bicycling, and more.

My search on "prostate" found about 40 articles, none older than 1999. The site searches the title, description, authors, and full text of the article. Clicking on a search result takes you to the original article. If a particular article meets your needs, you can click on an icon that finds articles that are similar. When I did that for the prostate results, I found some good general articles on cancer treatment.

For each result you can also click on an icon that adds the article to your "My Articles" listing. That way, as you're doing your research and find articles that are useful, you can mark them so that are added to a list. You can even add a comment. Then after you've finished your research, you can return to My Articles and see a listing of the most useful articles along with your comment on each one.

You can also set up an account so that if you're using a computer other than your own, you can still access your My Articles section. The site helpfully explains how your Internet browser uses "cookies" to store personalized information on your computer. And it explains that if you register and set up a user name and password, that cookie information will then be placed on any other computer that you may use to access the site.

In addition to the search feature, MagPortal has a directory that organizes the articles into twelve main categories, including Business, Internet, Family & Home, Sports, Health, and Science & Technology

© 2000 by Jim Karpen, Ph.D.