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It sounds to me like maybe you should go one further than just creating a superb academic RSS reader, and instead try to create an online community for academic
by adbge 16y ago
It sounds to me like maybe you should go one further than just creating a superb academic RSS reader, and instead try to create an online community for academics -- a la reddit for PhDs.
Instead of simply indexing links to other sites, I think it would make sense to provide the necessary tools for academics to _easily_ host papers via this service. This way you wouldn't need to rely on typically paywalled online academic journals, and you wouldn't have to wait for papers to trickle down from Nature, etc.
- barmstrong 16y agoYep - do some crowd sourcing like HN for academics.
- alimoeeny 16y agoYou all know, things like HN does not happen that often, specially in a world ruled by old professors. To build an HN for academics, first you need to be field specific (really narrowly specific!) and you need to be well known or supported in that community (this would make you an old professor!)
- stoney 16y agoDon't start with the professors - start at the bottom and work up. Find a large-ish existing community of PhD students (e.g. all students at a certain lab) and build up from there.
- jsarch 16y agoTwo comments: I like the idea of a "reddit for PhDs" because the community would "upvote" on the papers that are deemed important. You may need to have to have a different way of choosing which papers make the front page because papers don't necessarily follow the same trends as youtube videos. I don't think academics want to "_easily_ host papers", they want to do research. They rely on Nature and Science to be the clearing house for quality research not the download source. Once published, the papers are downloaded, emailed, read, etc. as needed.