Streamlining access to the common interactions with citations

When interacting with citations on Thinklab, the breakdown of my needs are as follows:

1. Go directly to the article on the publisher's website (55% of the time)
2. Copy the article's DOI for use elsewhere (40% of the time)
3. Copy a textual version of the citations including authors, title, journal, and year (4% of the time)
4. Go to the Thinklab page for the article (1% of the time)

However, currently option 4 is most accessible and option 1 is quite difficult. Option 1 used to be easier when the citation popover could be interacted with. One easy fix would be to make the popover toggle on click rather than (or in addition to) hover.

As example citations, here are two papers that I find to be on the weak side [1, 2].

I've made it so the popover remains visible if you hover over it. This allows you to copy the citation or click the DOI.

We could make the main link go directly to the external page instead of a Thinklab discussion page. The reasons we haven't done this are A) For SEO purposes we expect having contextual links to our publication pages is a very good thing and B) We want to make people aware that they can discuss publications on Thinklab. I think this last point could be accomplished by making some references to discussions in the popup box. And with regard to the SEO benefits: I think they can be sacrificed if it improves the user experience.

For SEO purposes we expect having contextual links to our publication pages is a very good thing

This is an interesting point. However, it may not be bad — now when I search for Thinklab content via google, I receive publication and tag pages. But, I'm almost always looking for the discussion pages which are home to the actual content rather than the aggregation pages.

B) We want to make people aware that they can discuss publications on Thinklab. I think this last point could be accomplished by making some references to discussions in the popup box.

Definitely, and the popover could more clearly state which link brings you to Thinklab content and which link brings you to the paper. In the future, I image more links could even be added such as links to citation databases, Altmetrics, and PubMed.