Some years ago we published an article called “Natural selection of academic papers” (http://www.openscholar.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/nsap_perakakis_2010.pdf) where we argued that the only thing we need to do to “fix” academic publishing is to remove all intermediaries and let the scientific process take its course and select the most valid and important research via unrestricted, open and transparent community interaction. We finally managed to build an infrastructure than facilitates these unmediated community processes and further provides incentives for academic collaboration at all stages of the research cycle. The Self-Journal of Science (SJS: http://sjscience.org) is this free agora where articles can be shared, reviewed and discussed openly and transparently.

Unfortunately, as you correctly put it, the infrastructure is not enough. I endorse your suggestions and really hope we start discussing them seriously as a community.

Excellent piece. It goes beyond the question of “how should we publish?” And takes on the related but different question of “how should we evaluate scientists?”

On the first point, I completely agree with you in questioning why we must have our work formally reviewed by peers either before or after publication. Generally careful authors will have subjected the manuscript to multiple revisions, incorporating feedback from all authors, but also a wider group of “readers.” Manuscripts in my laboratory spend an average of 6 months from first drafting of figures to submission, typically going through 20 versions of everything before I hit ‘submit.’ That’s why I find peer review to be such a nuisance. A trio of anonymous people demand that the paper be contorted into something that they would like to read, with questions that they care about. Often they are well aware that the demand list is really a wish list of experiments that can’t really be completed within a few years after the journal sends back a request for a revision. That’s why publishing on pre-print servers is such an exhilarating experience. I decide when the work is ready to share, I sign it, and vouch for it. Read my paper on biorxiv, or don’t. It’s really up to you. If you find it useful for your work or how you think about a problem, that’s wonderful. If you have reason to believe that I made a mistake, by all means tell me about it.

On the second point, I agree that committees do a cursory read of applications, generally using the CV journal names as proxy. I am just as guilty as the next person. Recently I have been doing exactly what you say. Go right to the research proposal and read that and the papers before going back to figure it if he is a he or she is a she, and what his/her pedigree is. The letters are so monotonously similar, I wonder how many are generated by a script on Google Recommend that allows the user to input a name and toggle the level of enthusiasm on a 10 point scale, with most people choosing values between 9.89 and 10.00.

But I think our immediate job at #ASAPbio is to address how we share our work, how we evaluate the people follows quickly thereafter.
Leslie