Developing an evidence-based, decentralised scholarly communication and evaluation system (PSA2020)
Channel: Cooper Smout
Date: 2021-01-06

This is our proposal for how we might create a radically new scholarly publishing system with the potential to disrupt the scholarly publishing industry. The proposed model is: (a) open, (b) objective, (c) crowd sourced and community-controlled, (d) decentralised, and (e) capable of generating prestige. Submitted articles are openly rated by researchers on multiple dimensions of interest (e.g., novelty, reliability, transparency) and 'impact prediction algorithms' are trained on these data to classify articles into journal 'tiers'. 

In time, with growing adoption, the highest impact tiers within such a system could develop sufficient prestige to rival even the most established of legacy journals (e.g., Nature). In return for their support, researchers would be rewarded with prestige, nuanced metrics, reduced fees, faster publication rates, and increased control over their outputs.

Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1LedPJhAF-AkxPF8LLqeOX8sC4VxDrDO8YhNX_eN9DJE/edit?usp=sharing