Limits of Current Practice

Current practice limitations in the peer-review system include:

• Overemphasis on research production. The "publish or perish" mentality in academia places more emphasis on the number of publications rather than their quality. This devalues the importance of rigorous paper reviews and the publication of rebuttals to flawed research. Referee aims to prioritise quality and reliability by incentivising in-depth reviews.

• Overemphasis on credentials and status. In higher education, exclusivity is a feature, not a bug. This prestige hoarding manifests in many forms. For example, elite institutions (e.g. Harvard) could open their courses to the public and grant diplomas to tens of thousands each year (and tens of thousands are capable of earning them) but that would dilute the value of that signal, so they don’t. Journal editors and referees are not immune to these status symbols, judging papers from award winners and selective institutions as having more merit and requiring less scrutiny than others. This vastly limits the quality of research, as lesser or non-credentialed people cannot participate in the system. Referee seeks to democratise the process by allowing a broader range of participants to contribute to knowledge curation, regardless of their credentials.

• Overproduction of PhD graduates. Doctorate problems produce far more PhD graduates than the academic market can handle. The mean number of new PhDs that a typical tenure-track faculty member will graduate during his or her academic career can vary widely. Within engineering disciplines, for example, only 12.8% of graduates can find jobs in academia on average, but for environmental engineering the chances is roughly 5%. The key point is that although many PhDs elect to pursue non-academic opportunities, many others are shut out of the knowledge curation project. Referee throws a lifeline to such people by allowing them to be gainfully employed at identifying flaws in unreliable papers.

• Overemphasis on teaching. Faculty members are often required to teach courses, even though teaching and research require different skill sets. With the advancements in mass communication and AI technologies, the need for numerous instructors teaching the same courses can be reduced. Recognizing this shift could enable faculty to focus on advising students and pursuing research. Referee can help manage the resulting increase in research output by curating and assessing the quality of published works.