Reinventing academic publishing online

Print journals are limited to an accept/reject dichotomy, which implies that quality is an all or nothing thing. In contrast, an open KES can rank papers on a many–point scale, which conveys more information to the reader. The Figure 1 pyramid represents a 1–5 rating system (Limited to Excellent), plus a 0 Not Yet Rated category, and a -1 Not Recommended category. The actual scale would be a ten–point semantic differential, plus a reject option (-1). Ratings could be broken down by criteria like relevance, rigor, writing, comprehensiveness, logical flow and originality.

Figure 1: A democratic KES design.

The top white triangle of the pyramid represents the current say 10 percent of submissions that a top journal might print, while the remaining 90 percent of “rejected” knowledge is not available to readers. In this system however all the knowledge a reader chooses to make visible is available for use.

A natural initial response is that this involves too much work. Yet already to reject even the worst paper someone must read it to some degree, i.e., traditional systems already assess every submission as otherwise how is the decision to reject made? The only difference is that while print journals reject in secret, an open KES displays papers it “rejects”, i.e., is transparent rather than opaque. The difference is not how many papers are assessed, but whether the assessment is visible or not. If all submissions must be assessed anyway, why not do it openly?

First Monday - Whitworth