Online reference managers are extraordinary productivity tools, but it would be a mistake to take this as their primary interest for the academic community. As it is often the case for social software services, online reference managers are becoming power
"Academic literature should be freely available: developing countries need access; part time ... thinkers ... journalists and the public can benefit; ... you’ve already paid for much of this stuff with your taxes ... important new ideas from humanity"
One way to try to get a handle on what's happening in a scientific field is to study citations in research papers. n a visualization of a complex network with many links, however, it can be very difficult to recognize significant patterns amid the clutter