Scholarly publications are key to the transfer of knowledge from scholars to others. However, research papers are information-dense, and as the volume of the scientific literature grows, the need for new technology to support the reading process grows. In contrast to the process of finding papers, which has been transformed by Internet technology, the experience of reading research papers has changed little in decades. The PDF format for sharing research papers is widely used due to its portability, but it has significant downsides including: static content, poor accessibility for low-vision readers, and difficulty reading on mobile devices. This paper explores the question "Can recent advances in AI and HCI power intelligent, interactive, and accessible reading interfaces -- even for legacy PDFs?" We describe the Semantic Reader Project, a collaborative effort across multiple institutions to explore automatic creation of dynamic reading interfaces for research papers. Through this project, we've developed ten research prototype interfaces and conducted usability studies with more than 300 participants and real-world users showing improved reading experiences for scholars. We've also released a production reading interface for research papers that will incorporate the best features as they mature. We structure this paper around challenges scholars and the public face when reading research papers -- Discovery, Efficiency, Comprehension, Synthesis, and Accessibility -- and present an overview of our progress and remaining open challenges.

翻译：学术出版物是知识从学者向他人传递的关键载体。然而，研究论文信息密集，随着科学文献数量的增长，对支持阅读过程的新技术需求也与日俱增。与已被互联网技术彻底变革的论文检索过程不同，阅读研究论文的体验数十年来几乎未有改变。用于共享研究论文的PDF格式因其便携性而广泛应用，但存在显著缺陷，包括：静态内容、对低视力读者可访问性差、以及在移动设备上阅读困难。本文探讨了"近期AI与人机交互的进展能否为智能、交互式、可访问的阅读界面提供支持——即便是针对遗留PDF文件？"这一问题。我们描述了语义阅读器项目（The Semantic Reader Project），这是一项跨机构的协作努力，旨在探索为研究论文自动创建动态阅读界面。通过该项目，我们开发了十个研究原型界面，并与超过300名参与者及真实用户开展了可用性研究，结果显示学者们的阅读体验得到改善。我们还发布了一个研究论文的生产级阅读界面，随着最佳功能逐渐成熟，该界面将集成这些特性。本文围绕学者与公众阅读研究论文时面临的挑战——发现（Discovery）、效率（Efficiency）、理解（Comprehension）、综合（Synthesis）与可访问性（Accessibility）——展开论述，并概述了我们的进展及尚待解决的开放挑战。