You seem to be describing a high-maintenance search engine, if I'm not mistaken. The thing is, to my knowledge most academics keep up to date on most everythin

You seem to be describing a high-maintenance search engine, if I'm not mistaken. The thing is, to my knowledge most academics keep up to date on most everything that is happening in their field; they don't need this high level overview because they don't communicate solely through journals. It's only if you don't have the view that it's useful; which is obviously a problem for PhDs, but I'd question whether it's worth the necessary annotation investment (hours per paper for good classification, I'd imagine).