Utopia Docs is a desktop app (PDF reader) + web service that allows users to annotate PDFs in a localized (anchored), conversational format. Annotations are universally visible: if another user opens the same PDF, they’ll see other users’ annotations.

http://getutopia.com/

Stack Overflow

Upvoting/downvoting of questions/answers/comments, credit accumulation, new capabilities as credit is accumulated (e.g., can only upvote comments after some number of points have been gained).

Mismatch between length of questions & the long-form articles we want to be able to handle.

http://stackoverflow.com/

Commentpress

Fine-grained commenting theme for WordPress, so that conversations can happen on paragraphs. Big advantage over Utopia: in the browser; in WordPress and therefore more hackable.

http://www.futureofthebook.org/commentpress/

Annotum

WordPress theme for “journal” publication/review used for PLoS Currents

http://annotum.org/

http://currents.plos.org/

PLoS Hubs

“Portal” platform, currently only one example.

http://hubs.plos.org

Thoughts/mashups

• Pull Utopia Docs/other annotations could into a Stack Overflow or other-like service via an API?
• WordPress-based solution using Annotum/CommentPress/ratings plugin, etc., etc.
• Some other content management system/framework (Drupal etc.)

Here is the (long) report on the UK academic staff reading patterns.

http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/Reports/ukscholarlyreadingreport/

A report my team did for the Publishing Research Consortium on factors that influence reading is the second report listed at this link. They have also sponsored research on peer review and other things. It is a group of publishers, but they put no constraints on the research.

http://www.publishingresearch.net/projects.htm