To jump-start interest in the annotation program, arXiv has been converting mentions of its articles in external blog posts (called trackbacks) into annotations that are visible on an article's abstract page when using Hypothes.is.

The scientific publisher eLife in Cambridge, UK, has been testing the feasibility of using Hypothes.is to replace its peer-review commenting system, says Ian Mulvany, who heads technology at the firm. The publisher plans to incorporate the annotation platform in a site redesign instead of its current commenting system, Disqus. At a minimum, says Mulvany, Hypothes.is provides a mechanism for more-targeted commentary — the equivalent of moving comments up from the bottom of a web page into the main body of the article itself.

The digital library JSTOR, for example, is developing a custom Hypothes.is tool for its educational project with the Poetry Foundation, a literary organization and publisher in Chicago, Illinois.

That should enable the tool to be used for journal clubs, classroom exercises and even peer review.