[murphyslab]

I first checked out Fermat's Library on account of the email list (the "Journal Club") that features a different paper each week. Even that is designed for maximal vendor lock-in: You can't download the paper. They don't even link to the paper's DOI so you can find another copy.

Additionally, like many social sites, the idea is to collect user-created value for free, centred solely within their control. That aspect echoes of the great problem with scientific publishing: Scientists produce information, and give it away to some corporation for free, which then charges the public to access it. The user comments, even if informative, are stuck on the site; you have to return to the site to access those comments.

Even if "All team members have an academic background and share the desire to make science more open and widely distributed" [0], there is no guarantee that the user-populated database of annotations will remain free or accessible in the future, since again, it's stuck on that site.

[0] : https://fermatslibrary.com/about