The reasonable middle ground is to decouple selection from publication. There is no reason that research should not be published at all while it's still undergo

The reasonable middle ground is to decouple selection from publication. There is no reason that research should not be published at all while it's still undergoing review, or still getting rejected from the "top" journals. (Disclosure: I volunteer for https://Plaudit.pub https://Plaudit.pub, one effort to achieve this.) I would also argue that "reasonable metric" in practice is more like "usually reasonable judgement by people with usually relevant knowledge".