Comment by rlayton2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rlayton2 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Academics write the paper for free, academics review the paper for free. I've published quite a bit and never had worthwhile input from a non-academic editor. A journal's only real cost would be in hosting costs, which I'm sure would be minimal for static content.

While the big-ticket journals have a value from being so picky, often this is at the expense of some things. For instance, it is hard to get replication studies published, as journals like Nature want every article to be "front-page news" if they can. I'd like to see some weighted reputation system used instead, where academics can give their "vote" to papers they like, giving it a total weight, however such systems have been proposed in the past and haven't got much traction.

I don't think there is an answer in the above, but I'm not sure that the substantial costs are justified.

> I'd like to see some weighted reputation system used instead, where academics can give their "vote" to papers they like, giving it a total weight, however such systems have been proposed in the past and haven't got much traction.

A reddit-clone with strong verification/validation of user accounts seems like it would fit the bill. I can imagine a system with a small monthly fee to participate, subreddits with paid moderators (read: reviewers), voting system that would float good papers to the top, and of course comments. The pay-to-participate barrier would hopefully keep the quality high but at a minimum cover the hosting costs. And run by a non-profit foundation.

I feel like quora could have gone this route

”where academics can give their "vote" to papers they like”

That would be gamed, just as there are “citation rings” (I cite you if you cite me) and “peer review rings” now.

So, you’ll need an authority to decide on what votes are unbiased.

That’s the role publishers have now. Are they doing it perfectly? No. Could others do it better or cheaper? Who knows?

Yeah, that's sort of what I was trying to say. It will be gamed like the current system, but reputation networks are a studied problem with lots of options of things like this. just nothing thats taken off.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com