Enhanced PDF view like readcube. This allows you to hover over each reference to as you read a paper so you can easily add it to your library. You can also see different metrics about each reference and sometimes even the abstract.
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Readcube’s implementation is certainly impressive although in my personal experience it is also rather intermittent. I am curious to hear about what you and other find most useful about it and when/where you expect it to work.
We do have some of the capability in the form of the “Cited By” link which appears at the bottom of references where the data is available. This will list the articles citing the paper as well as the the number of times those articles have been cited. Granted, this is forward-looking rather than backward-looking information.
The best thing about their implementation is the ability to seamlessly look up cited papers without interrupting the reading flow. Hovering over cited papers opens a little pop-up that lets me see the paper, click through to abstract and / or easily add it to my library as well as see metrics.
This is an organic process that any scientist that reads papers uses often. We do both feedforward and backwards looking searches. Esp. for a more recent paper or a review this would be very relevant.
I think you nailed google doc integration / sharing. However, the lack of offline access (both on ios/android and as a standalone client) and “enhanced” reading features are a problem for full adoption on my part.
Perhaps you can develop a plugin for offline access - just like gmail offline works. At least saving the database for offline access (without the pdf) should be trivial. Also, if you used google drive sync tool you would get that for free as well.
That said, as you state, ReadCube also have issues - not every paper can be “enhanced”.
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Actually we have some plans in this direction making the cited papers available directly in the PDF view. We are working behind the scenes on some new data infrastructure that would give us access to the citation graph. But it’s too early to say anything more specific how and when this will end up in the PDF viewer.
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