For some time I've thought that the concept of a "journal" artificially forces together several features that can exist independently. This usually includes som

For some time I've thought that the concept of a "journal" artificially forces together several features that can exist independently. This usually includes something roughly similar to: (not a complete list, or in any particular order) 1. people that want to publish their research, theories, response, etc 2. a mechanism for having submissions peer reviewed 3. curating which submissions will be included in the publication 4. actually physically (or electronically) publishing and disseminating the papers to the interested community 5. people actually reading it and responding (possibly recursively) 6. reputation and status derived from authorship, being referenced by others, etc 7. archiving the papers - and hopefully the data These features are traditionally part of the same process for practical reasons like the cost/time to physically publish before modern printing technology. This worked, creating resistance to any change. Now, I suspect that over reliance on the concept of a "journal" limits your thinking. This article demonstrates some of that with it's framing of blogs as an alternative or competitor to journals. Instead, consider that modern computing and the internet make #4 very easy and almost free. We have various ways to archive (#7), which include actual verification (e.g. "git fsck", signed commits). We already curate (#3) as a separate step with specialty blogs and aggregators like HN. I'm not saying journals are bad or obsolete. I'm just suggesting that there might be better ways to organize the process, and that different granularities of "journal"-like process can probably coexist.