> also agree with you on points 1-4. One possible solution to the problem you raise on point 2 is for the open archives to implement an open peer-review system

> also agree with you on points 1-4. One possible solution to the problem you raise on point 2 is for the open archives to implement an open peer-review system -- although it's really hard to do that well at scale. (HN moderators nod in agreement.) Hopefully the folks at the various open archives are already thinking about peer review too. The attempts that come to mind are: (1) I think there's some service that links papers to pubmed or something, to "attach" comments to the papers? (2) Some arxiv services have allowed for "endorsements" by other authors or users. My experience with both of them is that, deserved or not, there's a sense that it's hard to interpret them because of issues related to the informality of it all and lack of accountability. I personally sort of like the second option but it's fairly low-effort and hard to interpret that way. As I'm typing this my sense is that at some level what people are really looking for with peer review is some editorial process that people have gone through to reach some threshold. In both of those cases, the peer review comes after the paper is written, and there's not a lot of incentive to improve it or change it except through the authors' own conscience. Of course, we've seen how the traditional peer review system fails or can be abused, so how to achieve that threshold of "this paper has gone through some kind of editorial revision process" without it turning political or random is the tricky part. I guess it's a way of figuring out how to have one's cake and eat it too. Maybe some system where authors can choose whoever they want to have edit it? That's susceptible to extreme abuse but maybe not more overall abuse than the current system. I personally am fine with commentaries and endorsements -- I'm not sure why people can't think for themselves -- but I do think as you get into technical areas it helps for someone outside the field to know a paper has been looked over by someone else knowledgable. It just seems like we've gotten way far away from that original goal.