Online comments for scientific papers

This week's Nature has an editorial (“Time to Talk”) discussing online commenting for scientific papers. The value of such a feature is to make a more permanent record of the sort of critical give-and-take over research that might be witnessed when work is presented at a conference or department seminar, or behind the scenes during peer review. Presently “lively debates on blogs and social media” can be difficult to find and preserve, as it is too diffuse (such as on individual blogs like DTLR). The editorial points out some fields, such as evolutionary biology, where an established online hub already exists. The alternative model is for each journal to host its own commenting feature. The editorial states that Nature's and the Public Library of Science's have not gained much traction.

Thus, Nature is excited that PubMed is stepping into the breach, adding a commenting feature there, that might allow it to serve as a highly accessible and visible hub for comments. Most of the rest of the editorial focuses on the potential for incivility in online commenting. For example, they cite the journal ACS Nano expressing concern that scientists are trigger happy with charges of misconduct such as plagiarism or scientific fraud. 

The comments to the Nature editorial itself are valuable (there are 3 as I write this). The first comment points out that one aspect not discussed is anonymity, and there are both pros and cons for it. I would favor allowing anonymous comments, but that signed comments should be given greater visibility. For instance, signed comments could be visible by default, whereas one might have to click to see the anonymous comments. Editors should moderate comment sections and remove irresponsible content.

Thus far I myself have not offered user comments to any scientific literature. I am more likely to write about research here, on DTLR, unless I feel I have an extremely important point to make, and that I am extremely confident about making it. However, frankly I don't spend a lot of time reading original research these days, so I don't expect I'll be making much of a contribution.

A related development mentioned in the editorial is the imminent release by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory of bioRxiv, a preprint server for biologists, in the same mold as arXiv for physics. It will offer user comments.