a) analysis of current incentives; and
b) proposal to change those for a better outcome;
a) analysis of current incentives; and
b) proposal to change those for a better outcome;
The chief issue with external incentives like "fame" or "money" is that they will attract a lot of people who care about the reward, but not the work. If they can find a way to cut corners, they will. So it works fine if you have a very tight, objective and reproducible evaluation criterion such that you can't get rewarded for poor or sloppy work, but even in science this is difficult to establish, especially in a crowded field where most advancements will be small and incremental. Science works a lot on trust, if only trust that the described experiments were indeed made and the results were indeed as reported.
That's why I feel we get the best science when it's driven by people who just intrinsically want the best science, because getting it right is a reward in and of itself. It'd be neat if it was possible to identify them and just let them cook, regardless of whether results are produced or not. Paradoxically, I think this may be easiest in a setting where academia is undervalued -- the knowledge-seekers will always self-select into research (provided the conditions are good enough and they are not too undervalued), but the fame-chasers will have to find their validation elsewhere.
Referees/Publishers are set against Researchers, in, I dunno here, that their incentive is to make sure the researchers are wrong in some little way.
Researchers are set against the Grant Funders. Like, maybe you have to elect them somehow?
Grant Funders are set against the Publishers in that they select journals for funding. Look, it's Monday morning, I'm grasping at straws here, alright?
Anyways, take whatever many groups you have, at least 3 for proper roshambo mechanics, and set their incentives against each other, round and round, and such that at the end, you have 'Science' spinning towards greater public service.