[maxkfranz]

I generally agree.

On the other hand, the world is now a different place as compared to when several prominent journals were founded (1869-1880 for Nature, Science, Elsevier). The tacit assumptions upon which they were founded might no longer hold in the future. The world is going to continue to change, and the publication process as it stands might need to adapt for it to be sustainable.

[ezst]

As I understand it, the problem isn't publication or how it's changing over time, it's about the challenges of producing new science when the existing one is muddied in plausible lies. That warrants a new process by which to assess the inherent quality of a paper, but even if it comes as globally distributed, the cheats have a huge advantage considering the asymmetry between the effort to vibe produce vs. the tedious human review.

[maxkfranz]

That’s a good point. On the other hand, we’ve had that problem long before AI. You already need to mentally filter papers based on your assessment of the reputability of the authors.

The whole process should be made more transparent and open from the start, rather than adding more gatekeeping. There ought to be openness and transparency throughout the entire research process, with auditing-ability automatically baked in, rather than just at the time of publication. One man’s opinion, anyway.