Comments at journal websites: just turn them off

A couple of years ago, I noted that some journals were not making the process of commenting on articles especially easy. My latest experience suggests that little has changed.

One reason why scientists don’t comment at journals

This week, Nature announced a new online commenting facility and noted that:

Online discussions about our research papers are likely to be considerably more subdued, according to the experience of other publishers who already allow commenting.

They offer several reasons why this might be the case. Here’s one: it helps if you make it easy.