Hacker News Reader

What we need is:

1. make science self-publishing using decentralised protocols the default 2. redefine traditional journals and publishers as curators or labellers on top of the network, instead of owners

View on HN

Before you do either of those you need to convince academia that publishing in traditional journals/"prestige" legacy journals does not matter as much to the job. The entire system has Goodhart's Law-ed themselves into a trap connecting tenure to a very specific kind of publishing. Until that changes everything else will just get ignored.

The academia is not the real problem. Once you pass the initial filters, you will be judged by other academics, who are usually pretty reasonable. (For every reviewer 2, there is also a reviewer 1 and a reviewer 3.) They may not always notice that things work in different ways in different fields, and they may not have enough time to evaluate you properly. But they will usually at least try to see behind the metrics.

Governments are another matter, because they lack the expertise to judge your work. Immigration officials in particular are something academics often have to deal with. For some type-2 fun, try applying for a visa that requires something beyond a PhD from a reputable university and a job offer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com