Aligning Incentives with Quality

The current model of publishing where journals receive payment for each article they accept incentives a review process appealing to authors and with a high acceptance rate. By accepting payment for a review, paying reviewers, and publishing the review along side the work we remove this incentive from the process and aim to improve quality.

Single Authority

With a range of peer-reivewed journals for every field, unethical authors who submit fraudulent or plagiarised work are able to continue submit work and reviewers who act in bad faith, for example relying on LLMs for producing reviews, continue to be gatekeepers. By providing a central clearing house for authors and reviewers we can limit the influence of bad actors on the system and create a more uniform quality of peer reviews.

Efficiency

It’s not uncommon for authors to have to submit manuscripts to more than one journal for it to be published. This slows down the publication process and results in duplication of the review process. By decoupling review and publication we can make the system more efficient.

Equally, journal editors need to make decisions on which manuscripts to submit to a time-consuming and expensive peer-review process with limited admin as well as spending time performing admin on the review process.

Controls

Number of reviews

We limit the number of scholarly reviews that can be performed per year to prevent outsize influence from a small number of reviewers, this limit does not apply to technical reviews.

Low vs High Cost of Living Regions

Authors and readers in the developing world and low cost of living areas can be locked out by high article processing charges, despite being expected to contribute to reviews to the system. By paying reviewers the same regardless of location and charging authors the same, we’re hope to level the playing field by enabling reviewers to roll over their reviewing fees into reviews on their own work.