Scientific publishing is the largest experiment on backlinking we have access to

Anybody used to scientific publishing will recognize this tools already. A writer links to previous works by creating citations. Future work uses our papers to keep building. But is not only one-way, every time someone cite us, we get a notification and can see in which context our work is being used. This pattern became so relevant, that there are entire metrics built on citations to judge the quality of journals.

In a way, scientists have been using backlinks across domains for a very long time. There is trolling and there is also a certain prestige (both from authors and journals) being passed onward, but in a limited extent. However, when I see discussions about webmentions and transclusion, I see little insight gained from (in my view) the longest running experiment on backlinking to which we have access.