8 karma · joined January 13, 2014
In physics we do already have that with the arxiv.org (though there are no public discussions) but it works darn well in my sub-field and others. We cannot wait for most other disciplines to have an epiphany. So grant agencies forcing publishers AND authors to open access their material will bring us a huge step forward towards solving the most challenging problems of our time.
http://www.openrev.org/paper/harvard-university-entrance-exa...
http://www.openrev.org/paper/secret-tpp-treaty-intellectual-...
I presume that there will be little “where is this reference from” but more “what does this word mean” (for example look at all these acronyms in biology and chemistry papers).
Third kind of annotations is simply posting links to good references. From tests in Physics classes it turns out this is what students did and liked a lot. Sometimes its just damn hard to find a good explanation or image of a physical concept.
That brings me to my last group of annotations: Explanations. That is the rephrasing of the scientific language that is sometimes written truly encrypted. We also anticipate people to improve the scientific content by suggestions new solutions, highlight flaws, post missing derivations, etc. This is likely the hardest annotation form, since it requires "academic rigour" as some of you have noted. And this is what we are shooting for.