First, evaluation by peers is part of the researchers’ job. The time spent on this work by researchers is already paid for by universities and research institutes through the salaries of researchers and the necessary web infrastructure is inexpensive. Thus, I am not in favour of paying referees

Second, publication of nice articles, well formatted, proof edited, and publicized and sent to media may cost money. But this should be left optional for the authors because this is not strictly a scientific matter.

This is what Peer Community in – https://peercommunityin.org/ – proposes : evaluation and validation of preprints by peers and no need to ultimately (but leaving this option open) publish the preprint in a journal.

This PCI service is completely free for authors and readers alike.

One consistent theme is that we need to disentangle the various roles that journals have, for example in:
* communicating new findings effectively
* providing quality control to help improve reliability and reproducibility
* evaluating the potential importance of the work
* evaluating the researchers who are responsible for the work

The ideas for breaking these functions apart look interesting and many are already in action, via the use of preprints (bioRxiv), peer review focusing on technical aspects (PLOS ONE and the similar ‘journals’), and combinations of the two like F1000 Research. As several others have said, however, breaking the link between journal publication and the evaluation of researchers is no doubt the hardest challenge of all.

I would just like to emphasise the importance of the community of people involved in all this. One of the other key functions of a journal is to act as a focal point for a community of people who can pretty much be relied on to do a first-rate job in the editorial and peer review process. I’ve seen this time and again in my career in publishing. It begins with the editors at the heart of the journal and extends out to the advisory board and the entire network of reviewers who are called on to help assess the submissions.

Another side to this issue is about getting real buy-in to an alternative approach. At eLife, where I work now, this has been a challenge (as it has in other initiatives I’ve been involved in). The goals of our process are a bit different from the usual approach, and it takes a lot of attention and effort to help people not to revert to ‘normal’ behaviour. So another challenge that any new initiative will face is getting that message across – making sure that reviewers really understand what’s expected, especially if the goal is to separate technical from impact evaluation. In general, there’s a huge amount to be gained from increased training and mentoring in peer review, and perhaps new projects like APPRAISE and PEER FEEDBACK provide an ideal opportunity to do just that. This could help to increase the population of prospective reviewers too.

If we had a system whereby those reviewers got academic credit or recognition if they contribute significantly in peer review, then perhaps peer review would be less of a chore. And no payment would be necessary for the review.

But of course the recognition system is in the hands of funders and research institutions!

Might you need to police this (especially if offered free to authors) to prevent some using it as a proof-reading service?

Have you had any discussions with publishers and any indication they might be prepared to reduce APCs for Evaluated Preprints given that a lot of the leg-work of peer review has already been done. If the big players don’t budge on APCs, this could seriously undermine the project.

Lastly, given the important of disciplinary communities, mentioned my Mark Patterson (but also evident in PeerJ’s recent announcement that it wants to create such communities within its megajournal), might there be a problem recruiting reviewers who are already dedicated to their discipline or society journals?

I fail to see why you insist that peer reviewers should be paid. This is unnecessary, as peer reviewers are already used to working for free, and will get even more incentive to do it in an open system. You do not even mention ‘getting extra revenue’ in the benefits of your system to scientists. On the other hand, the drawbacks of paying reviewers are severe, starting with favouring big established publishers over new, lean organisations. (Including the journals that are free to both authors and readers, and survive on modest institutional subsidies.)