That's a nice idea, and not one I'd considered. Thanks for explaining your motivation! I suppose that you could achieve the same by commenting, although it's more work / more intrusive if you are just bookmarking the article. I can't think of another clean way to do it using the current blockchain functionality. Perhaps making a post "this is my reference list" and adding a comment with each new link when you find new articles? Again, it's more work.

You are correct that it doesn't harm the ecosystem. It does lose you one of your votes (or it reduces your voting power; whichever way you want to think about it) and you receive no curation rewards but that's not a big issue at low SP, particularly if you're voting at low percentage (by using the slider on busy for example).

I'd be interested to hear other motivations from anyone out there, to understand whether this is more a deliberate than accidental issue.

Best wishes too!