For 12 years, EJGE has accepted all file formats Geotech authors have chosen. We have worked on these files of different formats, done the necessary file format conversions, and published them all in one standard format. We have presented all papers in the web-browser standard language of html with all photographs, drawings, and equations converted to the most efficient file formats available.
This has insured that Geotechs around the world have always had free access to the most recent research done anywhere on the globe.
As the Web evolves, EJGE evolves, too. Following the developments around us, EJGE continuously adjusts its policies and procedures. EJGE has been so successful that www.ejge.com serves to its readers an incredible number of papers per second, every second of every day.
One of the recent developments that has occured outside our control, but affects us directly, is in the area of file formats.
Microsoft has introduced a new file format, docx, with Microsoft Word 2007. The new format is more efficient: A DOCX file is much smaller than the equivalent file in the old DOC format, because it uses the well-known compression method of ZIP'ping. But unfortunately it is not backwards compatible with previous versions of Microsoft Office and you need to convert it to .doc format if you only have an older version of the word processor program.
Luckily, there are free (or almost-free) services and programs available on the 'Net. Here is a small set of them: (if a link does not work, don't be mad at us, you know whom!)
"http://www.get-word.com/" FREE Microsoft Word 2007 (PC) (V2)! Sorry this went offline while we were working on this!
Another free Word 2007 offer we don't know how long this will last.
Finally, Microsoft itself offered help: Microsoft's converter for free.
Wait, Google joined in: Google documents website.
Well, we are going to have to take a coffee break and come back to see what's happened in an hour!
So, there is no reason not to take advantage of this. Actually, they gave us a lemon, we'll make a lemonade. You can still send us DOC files if you wish (or even the most inefficient file format ever invented, like pdf), but EJGE will soon adapt to these changes. From our point of view, the most important factor is efficiency: With doc or docx file formats, everything is in one file (your browser does not need to ask the ejge.com server for component files; in the current method, your browser has to ask the Web server 100 times if there are 100 little pictures in the page—this is true for all Web servers, not just ejge.com). From your point of view, this means faster retrieval of a paper from EJGE. However, your browser may not be able to show it to you. You can save it and then find a viewer, if you don't have one already.
