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Comment by bee_rider | Hacker News Reader

It is a kind of fuzzy signal though. Maybe a better replacement could be found. Like, if we all had PGP keys, we could just sign the article that we like, right? Then, a web-of-prestige that more accurately represents the field could be generated. ORCID could manage it, haha.

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Publishing collusion rings would greatly enjoy using this web-of-prestige: https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/a-massive-fr...

Those already occur though.

I wonder if we could form a graph that would make a collusion ring intuitively visible (I’m not sure what—between papers, authors, and signings—should be the edges and the nodes, though). Making these relationships explicit should help discover this kind of stuff, right?

Another problem with my idea is that a lot of famous luminaries wouldn’t bother playing the game, or are dead already. But, all we can really do is set up a game for those who’d like to play…

Well, yes, this is exactly the kind of well-intentioned technical solution that just will not work at all when it comes in contact with human nature. "Oh boy my paper got accepted in Nature!" vs - "oh boy some people on the internet signed my pgp thing!". Just not the same.

I mean… if somebody famous in your field signed your paper, you might be excited. Reviewer #2 is just some anonymous figure.

I think the difference is with a journal like Nature people are competing for strictly limited real-estate. The famous academic could still sign however many papers they like..

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