PeerLibrary is a rapidly expanding opennsource project that seeks to provide a collaborative layer of knowledge over academic publications by allowing users to share real-time highlights and annotations. The project is a response to the question as to what comes after open access.

 

Open access publications will be opened to the public: this however, is often not enough for making them fully accessible. PeerLibrary is a one-stop website where users not only have access to the original publications but also access to a collaboratively edited layer of knowledge surrounding the publications and existing sources of data, like ContentMine. Through this integration of multiple sources of knowledge, PeerLibrary simultaneously enriches the experience of reading research by making it more interactive and open up the possibility for improving publications through peer feedback.

 

Furthermore, by encouraging more community interaction and involvement, PeerLibrary stimulates discussion on how we can build better open access resources and tools for the general public, not only for scholars and researchers. How can we bridge communities inside academia with communities existing and forming outside? We believe that PeerLibrary plays a vital role in fulfilling the potential of open access to enrich and energize all those communities, and we are pursuing these goals through three specific steps: expediting access to publications, enabling public recordings of analysis and insights on said publications, and encouraging collaboration and openness in the development of science.

First, PeerLibrary simplifies and accelerates access to scholarly literature. Users can search or explore publications already available, or import those they are interested in. After locating the specific work, users can open up the full text, including charts and images, directly in PeerLibrary in the browser. Users are no longer redirected to another site or forced to download files. Additionally, each publication has an easily recognizable URL, so readers can share the publication and increase access to the information that would otherwise be obscure and difficult to discover.

By providing all the works in-browser and with no redirection to other sites or applications, PeerLibrary aids in creating simpler and cleaner steps in research. Next, PeerLibrary encourages critical reading and engaging in the text by providing tools to annotate and comment directly on the works. Users can highlight important information and take notes in the margins online, just as how one would mark up a physical research paper. By eliminating the need to print files, the research process is contained in one online medium, creating a greater sense of organization. Furthermore, note-taking tools encourage active analysis, a recording of insights and questions while reading. Users can choose to keep their highlights and annotations private, or they can make them public, which leads into PeerLibrary’s key step in creating a more collaborative and open scientific community.

 

To make science truly open, readers not only need access to publications, they also need access to the additional knowledge layer and general discourse surrounding the publications. The annotations tool allows for real-time collaborative discourse and investigation of a text, not just individual reflection. When a user opens up a publication, they are not only able to make personal annotations but are also able to compare and contrast their comments to others. Public annotations from users appear on the side of the text, and users can provide feedback about which are the most valuable or interesting ones. By sharing notes, users can see what others think about a work, look for common problems, consider diverging opinions, and ask questions. Often, when scholars and researchers discuss publications, they discover issues or introduce provocative suggestions offline. By moving these thought processes and discussions online, the experience of scientific reading are becoming more interactive and engaging, which we hope will produce more thoughtful and innovative academic results.

PeerLibrary can be used as a tool for an individual, a group, or collectively and globally. We are currently focusing on group use cases, like classroom use and reading clubs, where smaller groups can read publications together and help each other. This is especially important for groups who share common interests, but might not otherwise be able to meet in person.

Above all, PeerLibrary believes that by providing the tools to demystify science, specifically annotations that elucidate issues in publications, the experience of learning science will become more inclusive. Annotations of texts will not only speed up the time scholars and researchers spend reading, they will also clarify scientific language, making publications more comprehensible and meaningful to the general public. We hope that if we promote collaboration and intellectual diversity within the scientific process and discussion, science will produce improved results and better serve the community.

PeerLibrary is open source and is being developed collaboratively. If you are interested, join us!

We would also love if you could try it out and give us feedback. We are building it for you and we need your input.

- Twitter: https://twitter.com/PeerLibrary
- Development mailing list: http://lists.peerlibrary.org/lists/info/dev
- Email: hello at peerlibrary.org