The Public Library of Science (PLOS) publishes open access scientific articles. These articles allow commenting, but very few people actually comment, a fact that caught the authors' eye given the nascent popularity of the concept of post-publication review. If people don't comment, how can we depend on them to review publications? It's a valid question. Different explanations offered - perhaps academics prefer traditional venues, like staff rooms and conferences. Perhaps what's missing (especially for mega-journals) is community. Perhaps it's just taking new models of review to be accepted. Or maybe (and this is my own speculation now) academics don't comment because there's no reward for commenting, and they do what they've always done for reward: cite and comment in a publication of their own. And that's not so bad - and what would be especially useful would be were there to be a way to view these follow-up publications linked from the relevant paragraph in the original publication, the way WebMentions works.
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