Governance

Project governance is the backbone of any decentralized initiative, especially when the ambition is as vast as that of the Referee project. We aim to fuse tokenisation, governance mechanisms, and community involvement into a cohesive system that ensures effective decision-making, incentivises those decisions towards project goals, and diligently monitors outcomes for continuous improvement.

Referee's mission is far-reaching: to transform the academic peer-review process into a decentralized, self-organizing ecosystem that elevates the transparency and reliability of scholarly work. By bringing tacit knowledge about paper reliability into the open, we empower quick access to expert evaluations. Yet, achieving such transformation begins with laying down robust standards and reference taxonomies.

The concept of a goal tree helps ensure the success of the various working groups. Such a tree consists of a single goal, the three to five critical success factors that must be done exceedingly well to achieve the goal and without which the goal cannot be achieved. Before articulating these elements for each working group individually, we note a few universal critical success factors and necessary conditions:

Universal critical success factors:

• A broad collection of diverse talents, experiences, knowledge, skills, perspectives, training, social background, age and gender.

• A governance structure that is flexible and able to become decentralized.

• A process that rewards members for active participation.

Necessary conditions and actions:

• An unambiguous and transparent policy for selecting and removing working committee members

• A transparent voting platform to ensure transparency

Governance within Referee spans multiple layers, from the overarching project management to specific operational aspects like bounty awards and automated bot approvals. To navigate these complexities, we've identified essential working groups:

• Development and maintenance of the Common Academic Weakness Enumeration (CAWE) framework

• Establishment of a universal scoring method

• Governance of automated agent review

• Streamlining the bounty setting and claiming process

• Directing marketing and outreach efforts

• Architecting the technical platform

• Formation of specialised academic guilds

We now discuss the goals, critical success factors and necessary conditions for each working group.