I think News and Views approaches would be a good start. Providing perspective, relevancy and background on a particular paper or area can be really helpful. I love checking on Research Blogging and rapidly getting a useful perspective, not only from the person who felt strongly enough about the paper to write a blog entry about it, but also from comments about both the paper and the blog entry.

The power law mathematics of the web means that sites with lots of eyeballs also get lots of comments. That is why Nature is making some progress along these lines. It is also why I think that it will be easier for some of the professional societies that publish online to create something similar.

Some of the problem is that the vast majority of papers don’t really stimulate much comment. If they’re good valid pieces of research and decently written, the author has probably already pointed out their significance (if there is any). Beyond that, how much more needs to be said about every paper? Sure the occasional groundbreaker or the occasional really bad paper might stimulate more conversation.

Blogs have the added advantage of having started the conversation for you. You won’t see comment on a blog entry that’s merely a link to a paper, but one that tries to make a point using that paper will draw comments. Perhaps journals that want active forums should invest more in “News and Views” sort of articles to get the ball rolling.

But I think my comments on shelf life are still relevant even to blog discussions. We’re fairly well trained to carry on conversations around new blog posts, but those conversations fade pretty quickly. If you read a blog post a year old and leave a comment, it’s doubtful that a new full-blown multi-person conversation will result.