Community feedback on scholarly content: Why it is important and why it should be preserved

Abstract

The provision of community feedback on the exploration of science is as old as the quest itself. As the publication process has evolved and collaboration technology has adapted along with it, feedback has moved from letters to listservs to preprints to online commenting and annotation. The February 2017 approval of open standards for web annotation provides the infrastructure for an interoperable collaborative annotation layer that will make conversations over scientific content ubiquitous and standard. How is annotation different from current commenting tools? What happens when websites discontinue support for comments, as happened in February 2018 when the National Center for Biotechnology Information announced the end of PubMed Commons? Learn how this community feedback was preserved in the form of annotations that support the FAIR data principles that they be findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable.