Augmenting Scholarly Reading with Cross-Media Annotations
2026-03-18 • Human-Computer Interaction
Human-Computer Interaction
AI summaryⓘ
The authors looked into how scholars read academic papers and noticed they often use extra materials like videos or web pages to help understand better. They found that most PDF annotation tools only let users add simple notes or highlights, but not other media types. So, they designed a new tool that lets researchers link parts of a PDF to different kinds of content like audio, video, or websites. This tool aims to make reading and sharing academic information richer and more helpful for others.
scholarly readingPDF annotationcross-media annotationacademic workflowmultimedia integrationreading toolsdesign explorationsupplementary materials
Authors
Qi Xu, Beat Signer
Abstract
Scholarly reading often involves engaging with various supplementary materials beyond PDFs to support understanding. In practice, scholars frequently incorporate such external materials into their reading workflow through annotation. However, most existing PDF annotation tools support only a limited range of media types for embedding annotations in PDF documents. This paper investigates cross-media annotation as a design space for augmenting academic reading. We present a design exploration of a cross-media annotation tool that allows scholars to easily link PDF content with other documents and materials such as audio, video or web pages. The proposed design has the potential to enrich reading practices and enable scholars to guide and support other researchers' reading experiences.