As it is today, academic documents have a few special fields for metadata (Abstract and Keywords) but they are not included in Reference Section of the documents which cite them, hence they are one step removed for analysis and not available to the reader. Visual-Meta can easily accommodate such extra metadata without interfering with the fashionable cosmetic layout preferences of the academic field, institution or journal. This can allow documents can take on hypertextual node characteristics. The benefits can be profound.
A description of this is available at wordpress.liquid.info/07/unleashing-hypertextuality-in-documents/frode/