Even if you'd achieve critical mass, I think there's another problem. A fundamental difference with say StackOverflow, is that for a typical programming questio

Even if you'd achieve critical mass, I think there's another problem. A fundamental difference with say StackOverflow, is that for a typical programming question there will be many people who, even if they don't know the answer, can distinguish a good from a bad answer. Most questions have a reasonably quickly verifiable answer, or they're about best practices. Scientific publishing on the other hand, should always be on the cutting edge, and has endless niches. If you judge that sort of work in StackExchange-style, in the best case an expert shows up (the guy who Cell editors would hopefully have invited for the peer review anyway) and gives you a subtle argument for/against, and almost nobody can vote it up/down because they lack the background to grasp the subtle detail. In the worst case, a Nobel Price winner shows up and leaves an off-the-cuff heuristic criticism, and everybody votes it up because well, hey. And it would look like the crowd sourcing worked... except that he totally missed the subtler points.