[larkinnaire]

There are some good points here, but the sweeping conclusion (presented with utter certainty) does not follow from them.

It seems like the author's beef is with journals, rather than peer-review. If we did away with "peer review" today, journals would still have to operate the same way -- they'd still have many more submissions than they have room for, so a team of people (ideally, peers) would need to, uh, review those submissions according to some criteria. We can discuss whether the criteria should be adjusted, but I don't see how journals survive without gatekeepers.

So, fine, he wants to do away with journals. Without a description of an alternative system, it sounds like the best researchers would just...upload their stuff to Arxiv and hope that someone reads it? Again, I'm not saying there is no alternative, but because he spends all his time arguing against "peer review", he spends no time discussing alternatives to journals that would solve more problems than they create.

He addresses the question "can we fix peer review instead of replacing it" by discussing ways that fixes have failed in the real world. So what makes him think that a replacement would be easier? The "burn it all down and rebuild it according to my preferences" approach also doesn't have a great track record!

And the certainty with which he states his conclusions gives me a sense that this is not someone who's super open to feedback.

[renonce]

He did make an example by publishing his paper on his own blog. So maybe every researcher can put a blog and upload papers there and expect them to appear in someone else's browser who followed the researcher because either he shared something interesting or someone else shared his paper? I've always wondered why academia can't work like social media. Not Twitter or Facebook, which is algorithm-controlled, blogs would work where everyone maintains their own sovereignty.

[larkinnaire]

[response to a deleted comment]

> The issue is too systemic at this point

Ah, but there are also systemic issues that prevent Congress from doing the things you'd like them to do. For instance, Congress is vulnerable to money. Journals have money they can use to lobby. Are there other players with money and incentive to lobby for the "burn it all down" side? Which mountain of systemic issues is easier to climb? Sounds like an empirical question.

Solving the problem by either approach is going to be really really complicated and full of compromises you won't like, and anyone who talks like their solution is super simple and obvious should be read with skepticism.