Preamble | Bigger Picture | History & Vision | Pilot Team | Participant Guide | Join the Pilot
Publishing is broken…
The current Peer Review & Publishing tradition does NOT promote authenticity in academic research.
- Lack of transparency in the current review and publishing workflow
- Researchers are only allowed to submit to one journal at a time for consideration for peer review under that journal
- Reviewer identities are not disclosed, frequently resulting in lack of accountability in critiques
- The review process functions as gate-keeping preventing the rapid dissemination of scientific findings
- Researchers pay twice to access and publish scientific findings
- Universities pay high prices to subscribe to individual journal brands and families
- Many journals charge an additional publication fee even After the acceptance of the manuscript, prior to publication
- Post publication, journals own the data and limit researchers’ right to freely distribute the contents of their discovery
- Discoveries are branded with a one-time value that does not account for study reproducibility or long term value to fellow scientists
- Biomedical sciences are facing a reproducibility crisis
- The most prestigious journals have the highest retraction rate due to concerns around data integrity
- Millions of taxpayer dollars are lost to efforts to compete for “first discoveries” rather than for collaboration within academia
To change academic publishing to what it should be, we are creating a dynamic system where science thrives, objectivity is centered and “impact” can evolve.
Be a part of this groundbreaking shift: a transparent, community-driven platform for storing and assessing discoveries. Together, we'll transform the way we share and curate science! Sign up here to join the pilot.
You can read about The Bigger Picture, but first we’ve got to test it.
Testing Our System
We’ve developed a pilot to evaluate an estimated 50-100 immunology pre-prints with “peer improvement review”—reframing peer review as an opportunity to make papers better—while also quantifying a paper’s quality and impact through a transparent scoring system. Ultimately we will compare the scoring results to where the pre-prints are eventually published, while also assessing speed, and author and reviewer satisfaction.
The ultimate goal is to implement this new reviewing paradigm as part of a community-led, journal-free space, where science will be evaluated and curated by and for scientists: Discovery Stack/Discovery Curator.
Want to learn more?
Check out the following links to understand why we have designed this experiment and how you could participate.