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This topic comes up again and again. (Here some references from a quick search: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10531374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?

This topic comes up again and again. (Here some references from a quick search: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10531374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10531374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18523847 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18523847 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8731271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8731271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18595074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18595074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22251079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22251079) But there are not many good solutions. Most seem to agree that we should move over to a more open system, like OpenReview, and also that all publications should be open for everyone afterwards, and not behind some paywall. But these are only two aspects of the system, and this is less about the peer reviewing itself. The community already has the trend to publish more and more directly on ArXiv. Just in addition to submitting it to a conference. If the conference peer review filters it out for some unlucky reason, it's still open for everyone to see. That might be already an improvement of what we had before. But probably it's not really the optimum yet. But what is the optimum?

jseliger 6y ago
There are good solutions, but existing publishers like Elsevier like the current situation because it makes them rich (https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/uc-terminates-subscriptions-worlds-largest-scientific-publisher-push-open-access-publicly https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/uc-termina...). Any existing individual academic is strongly incentivized to work within the rotten system, even though most know its pathologies and want to defect—but one person defecting alone will screw up their own career while likely leaving the system intact. The equilibrium is bad even though the solutions aren't complicated. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23291869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23291869

jseliger 6y ago

There are good solutions, but existing publishers like Elsevier like the current situation because it makes them rich (https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/uc-terminates-subscriptions-worlds-largest-scientific-publisher-push-open-access-publicly https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/uc-termina...). Any existing individual academic is strongly incentivized to work within the rotten system, even though most know its pathologies and want to defect—but one person defecting alone will screw up their own career while likely leaving the system intact. The equilibrium is bad even though the solutions aren't complicated. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23291869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23291869