[chancho]

"In this field we don't rely on peer-reviewed journals...papers are also published in journals, but I believe this is a formality that has more to do with obtaining grants and such than with actual communication within the community."

So peer reviewed journals are only important for grants, but your community doesn't rely on peer reviewed journals. Do you not rely on grants? Who funds your work? Do you all work for free, in your spare time?

[guygurari]

I guess I wasn't clear enough. What I mean is that the communication within the community, and the reputation of a researcher among her peers, does not rely on publications in reviewed journals. These are the things that can be compared with open-source development.

If researchers also need to publish their work in journals, write grant proposals etc., how is it relevant to the idea of applying the GitHub model to science? Of course raising money is part of the job for a professor, but thanks to the arXiv it's decoupled from the actual research work. It's at a point where I, as a Ph.D. student, have no reason to consider publishing in reviewed journals. This is in contrast to my friends in optics or condensed matter, for whom a publication in Nature or Science practically guarantees a good postdoc position.