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by Idontknowmyuser 3147 days ago
I wonder what are the challenges against implementing an open "near-full-automated" journal?

- anyone can submit a paper. which is stored in the yet to be reviewed section.

- only users with confirmed university affilation / users that published more than X papers can opt in to become a reviewer.

- a reviewer is randomly selected to receive a review offer [in his indicated field] which he can accept or decline.

- the user and the reviewer are than linked together anonymously and their correspondance is stored to be published with the paper under review section.

- after that the reviewer makes a decision.

- when enough reviewers have made their decision, the paper is marked as rejected, or moved to the published section according to a majority rule.

- if the paper failed,the user then can choose to either:

   * (modify the paper = optional) and resubmit

   * keep the paper public but indicate it failed the 
     review process

   * delete the paper
- if the paper gets published,trusted users of the site can then leave feedback (through the UI) to indicate:

  * whether they could reproduce the results or not:
  this might help alert the author if there are unclear 
  parts in thier methodology description.

  *  if the paper was helpful/intresting to them.

  *  add community questions under the paper, which can 
      be answered by the author / or a trusted user.
- authors can edit their work to correct in anytime they want [ allowing a faster correction of mistakes] , change history is kept to prevent abuse.

from a programming point of view it doesn't seem that hard to do. so what are the relevant obstacles?

2 comments

Problem with journals is not technological, but a coordination one (same as with p-value).

If every scientist "defects" to open-access journal - everyone is better of. But if only a handful do that they will lose impact factor and will take a hit to their career.

Addition: This is commonly known as Nash Equilibrium[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium

So a StackOverflow model for papers? Haven't a few people been attempting that in some of the open access projects?