Re:The Future of Peer Review
by RichardPrice on Sunday February 05, 2012 @05:17PM
(#3555467)
Wybo - thanks for these links. I totally agree that breaking the feedback loop you mentioned, that binds academics to the current journal system, is key. I think the central things that needs to happen are: building an alternative discovery system (already happening with the web), and building an alternative credit system (happening with citation counts, and other metrics, but is lagging behind the growth in alternative discovery systems, and needs to be accelerated).
I wonder if a distributed algorithms, as used in web based currencies (eg. bitcoin) or incentive based systems (eg. bit torrent), can be adapted to the peer review system? The currency being traded would be academic credit.
http://liquidpub.org/
This paper about journals:
http://wiki.liquidpub.org/mediawiki/upload/9/9b/Liquid-journ... (Liquid Journals)
And this paper about peer review:
http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=1226695 (Publish and Perish)
Though in a way the differences between peoples descriptions and views are details mostly, as what is clear is that peer review will change, and that it will move away from publisher-control.
Imho the biggest difficulty will be the social aspect; breaking the feedback-loop between journal-publications and perceived academic credit. Because until individual scholars can escape from the social trap of journal-publishing & handing over their copyrights, without harming their careers, they will be unlikely to do so.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_trap, and a great article on social traps: http://www.agls.uidaho.edu/agec467/agec467/Other%20readings/...)