[dbingham]

Yep! I came across them. There are a ton of different projects and platforms out there trying to tackle this problem. But so far every alternative I've come across can only handle some of the various services the journals are providing (or are trying to side step and redesign the whole process from the ground up, which is an even bigger hill to climb).

For example, there are several attempts to overlay review on pre-prints and open repositories (like Zenodo), but they aren't identifying qualified reviewers and matching them to papers in any way. There are the repositories and pre-prints themselves, but they aren't providing review. There are attempts to build open journals, but they're still taking the journal form, which means they still have lots of manual overhead.

Most of them have varying amounts of traction, but few seem to actually be on a course to replace the whole system.

...it remains to be seen whether peer-review.io will fare any better. I think it has a chance because it does provide an alternative system for each of the services the journals provide. Well -- except one, which is the moderator role the editor sometimes plays. That may prove fatal, but only time will tell.