This is actually something I have been thinking about writing myself. Look at all the major social networks, and all their metrics, analysis, ranking systems and the like.
Imaging what you could do with a social-network like publication database (research-gate sort of is, but it doesn't think big enough and the UX is confusing, imho). Every publication became a "post" so to speak. You could easily include discussions (both on the paper, as well as general discussions), ratings, user curated lists (instead of expensive journals), host links to any relevant non-paper data. Funding could be provided by Universities, or by means of a registration fee, or simply with an ad supported model. Targeted ads will probably bring in a relatively high CPM due to the target audience.
<rant>
Incidentally, while we're at it, we could also get rid of strict formatting guidelines and super-formal writing, some of the best papers I've read are informal. And it's a very modern thing to do anyway, old papers by Kelvin and the like read much better than what we have to write these days.
</rant>
Note that there are some projects that are related to this, for instance a social network for scientists [1], a Github-like site for article creation with public comments [2] and some unknown third party comment systems for arXiv [3]. (I just found this one by googling.)
For any success of such a project, the official endorsement from arXiv is crucial. Academia is a very conservative place; anything branded as a social network might hit a snag, especially if "pricing" or closed source recommendation systems pop up.
Hmm, authorea looks pretty interesting. Researchgate I touched on before. the last one looks more like a quick experiment than a serious attempt.
I don't think official endorsement by arXiv is necessary, what is important is to gain a critical mass. I think authorea has the right idea to give users a incentive to use the program. If possible, I would offer more free access to gain that initial traction, but of course this requires an investor with deep enough pockets to take the hit. Networking would also be key, to bring it back to the original article: if you could work with those involved here and offer your services to host all these open-access papers...
>Academia is a very conservative place; anything branded as a social network might hit a snag, especially if "pricing" or closed source recommendation systems pop up.
I think we need something similar in openness and positioning as Github. AFAIK Github did not market itself as a social platform at first, but it just made it so easy for its users that it ended up being key to its success.
I think that is the overall approach one should take, don't force the users into a pattern, that will not work and definitely not in rigid-academia. You have to guide them by a good UX, make them think they want to use your features because that is what's good for them (they're like cats in that regard).
Notice that arXiv does not need any money from its users; it is fully funded from academic/private donations and it does not seek to maximize revenue.
Authorea is very different; it has a very tough pricing model where you have to either choose to publish even partial work while you are writing (unacceptable to most scientists I know) or pay per article AND per month.
Basically, my issue with it is the same as with the current open-access model: I am trying my hardest to produce good science and release it for free; yet somebody tries to profit not from my own results, but from my desire to have those results published for free. ArXiv helps me while refusing to profit from this desire, and thus I love it.
You have to keep in mind that a lot of scientists (I think this is true for compsci/math/physics) choose a 50% pay cut so that they can do science, and not go into the (programming) industry. Speaking as a PhD student, we have modest means and do not like to be gouged.
True, which is one of the reasons why I'd like to do some number crunching regarding hosting costs vs. sponsors/ads and premium features (like GitHub's private repos) separate from the Open Access features.
What is peer review, but a formal system of review, comment, redrafting and endorsement? That could be moderated through the same system.
Drafting, extending and version control would be particularly important, I think. It's been a long problem with dead-tree journals, following adjustments in results is hard because they inherently rely on back-links, retractions (in extreme cases), letters, etc. Not a coherent way of centralising information.
Imaging what you could do with a social-network like publication database (research-gate sort of is, but it doesn't think big enough and the UX is confusing, imho). Every publication became a "post" so to speak. You could easily include discussions (both on the paper, as well as general discussions), ratings, user curated lists (instead of expensive journals), host links to any relevant non-paper data. Funding could be provided by Universities, or by means of a registration fee, or simply with an ad supported model. Targeted ads will probably bring in a relatively high CPM due to the target audience.
<rant> Incidentally, while we're at it, we could also get rid of strict formatting guidelines and super-formal writing, some of the best papers I've read are informal. And it's a very modern thing to do anyway, old papers by Kelvin and the like read much better than what we have to write these days. </rant>