How to be a scientist in a post-journal world
thescientistpapers.substack.com> The defining - and best - feature of preprint servers is that they do not try to litigate the rigor of the science in a paper, or try to decide whether it will ultimately prove important, before posting it. They just post it. We should embrace this, and fight the temptation to reinstate gatekeeping criteria and systems that disempower authors without providing any value.
S/N reduction. Without this, it will be impossible to wade through the flood of papers. Too easy to hemmorage them out anymore.
Author reputation and citation patterns provide plenty(?) of signal without journal/reviewer/editor endorsement. But you could still imagine introducing “badges” that provide similar additional signal to what publication in a top journal provides today. Academic societies issue a fixed number of badges to top preprints each year. But ditch the song and dance around peer review.
> citation patterns provide plenty(?) of signal
There are self citations and citation rings. The signal is very week, even with the curren model.
> introducing “badges”
You reinvented journals.
> There are self citations and citation rings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenfactor and other such indices are much less game-able
Peer review (as currently practiced) and closed access are the problems, not the quality signal provided by journal publication.