“I’m a strong believer in allowing commenting on online papers”, says Euan Adie on his blog Flags and Lollipops in a post titled Publishers, trackbacks and shared data. “This is something under serious discussion at Nature (the question is how to do it properly). The vast majority of researchers read, organize and discover papers online; we should give them the tools and opportunity to discuss papers online, too.”

The Flags and Lollipops posting contains a discussion of technical ways to alert authors when there are new comments on their published paper, and ways to create systems to track “informal” comments and writing, so it can be part of a scientist’s accredited boldy of work, and hence a more attractive proposition. We are interested in knowing your views — Nature authors past, present and future, among the scientific community. Comments are open.