A continuation of the earlier discussion of peer review standards (https://www.researchgate.net/post/Peer-review-standards-should-certain-consistency-be-expected). Among well-known issues with the status quo are: long delays; restrictions of access (complexity of preparation, costs especially in some domains, arbitrary requirements e.g. specific format, minimal length etc, obscure and variable editorial criteria and so on); inconsistent criteria and quality; lack of transparency; and other.
As a reviewer I had experiences that asked for inputs well beyond the domain expertise and at times, highly subjective such as style, clarity etc. As a result, I am highly selective in where to submit my work and whether to volunteer my time and effort as a reviewer.
But this is not intended as a critique of the status quo, rather, a discussion of possible improvements given the progress of the technology. Given that there's been already a substantial movement in pre-publication services, could it perhaps be extended to a research community-owned and run peer-review?
There can be several advantages to such a model, to name a few:
- clear and consistent criteria (this can be a topic for a discussion in own right, but essentially for presented research to constitute a new scientific result it needs to be 1) relevant to the domain; 2) novel; and 3) integral, i.e. no flaws in formulation and argumentation, and not necessarily in a strict and specific format, template, style, person, length and so on).
- higher efficiency and shorter times;
- clarity and transparency;
- clear incentive for the reviewers of a direct and immediate benefit to the research community.
Certainly, there will be technical items that would need to be resolved; but at this stage I would be looking to discuss it as a concept.
I think reviewers just need to make more effort to be more thorough and timely or punctual. That's it :)
Suppose one could improve the quality of reviews though I cannot immediately see how to achieve this with the common practice of volunteer unpaid reviewers (and employing only paid ones would further affect times to publication, not to mention the costs). But would it fix other problems, essentially, that standard channels of publication in many cases have become a matter of prize, prestige, status etc and at least in some known cases, to the detriment of timely information and sharing of the ideas within the research community?
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