The open-access journal eLife recently announced the launch of the annotation and commenting tool, Hypothesis, on our website, enabling users to make comments, highlight important sections of articles and engage with the reading public online. Both our organisations are long-time supporters of ORCID – eLife was an early member of ORCID, joining in 2013, while Hypothesis (a member since 2017) and ORCID have been partnering on a grant to bring annotation to biomedicine since 2015.
We have extensively customised Hypothesis’ open source software for use by eLife and other publishers with new moderation features, single sign-on authentication, and user-interface customisation options now giving publishers more control over its implementation on their sites. As a result, our users can now get started with annotations on eLife simply by registering with their ORCID iD.
eLife is a non-profit initiative that aims to help scientists accelerate discovery by operating a platform for research collaboration that encourages and recognises the most responsible behaviours in science, as well as providing a platform for experimentation and showcasing innovation in research communication. Our partnership with Hypothesis was announced in 2016 as an important advancement toward this goal. Implementing the Hypothesis tool on our website means users can now make notes and hold discussions on all eLife content, from research articles and commentaries to magazine articles and blog posts.
Evolving Hypothesis’ authentication capabilities so that they could integrate with eLife’s ORCID-based system was a key component of the development collaboration between our two organisations. This makes it possible for users to annotate using their eLife user account, instead of requiring a separate log in to Hypothesis. As Giuliano Maciocci, our Head of Product, explained during the launch of the newly customised tool: the improved moderation and authentication features give publishers more control over how annotations are deployed on their sites, and should result in higher-quality discussions around published scholarly content.
Heather Staines, Hypothesis’ Director of Partnerships, adds: “As an ORCID member, Hypothesis is pleased to work with two partners committed to open standards and transparency to bring new collaboration capabilities to publishers and platforms.”
