Web as Docuverse

Andrew Odlyzko has argued for a future system where all research articles are available in one online database. It would hold preprint papers, peer-reviewed papers, and comments to papers made by readers. Comments and citations should also be linked from the original paper (much like the "trackback" functionality in many weblog systems).

Electronic media may be conceptualized as essentially being databases. That implies, among other things, that they may be free of a publishing schedule. This has opened for interesting examples of reporting while researching, as in examples by Skjulstad and Walker.