[marmaduke]

I tend to think of science as a distributed consensus process, and that peer review is analogous to a proof of work, and publishers are gatekeeping the distribution of proof of work. I think this is a useful analogy because one can subtract (in theory) the gatekeeping entirely: distributing proof of work is required for the distributed consensus to update.

However, and, crucially, journals differ in their effect on the consensus, e.g. IEEE or PNAS have much higher impact factors, and the competition both among researchers and institutions creates a market opportunity for gatekeeping, that naturally sorts those same researchers and institutions for the next ground of grants.

Again, I think it's hard to understand what a fix would look like, if we don't first recognize how distributed consensus should work for science. Algos like Paxos require a leader, and editorial boards for journals are effectively leaders.