Technology Review: Blogs: Mims's Bits: 'Liquid Journals' Use the Web to Upend Peer Review

Technology Review: Blogs: Mims's Bits: 'Liquid Journals' Use the Web to Upend Peer Review: The zealous, relatively youthful programmers of Liquid Journal have concluded, and they're not alone in this, that the autocratic nature of "peer" review -- in which just three reviewers can, without fear their identities will ever be exposed, reject a paper for whatever reason they please, including a personal dislike of the submitter -- does not add value to the scientific process.

Like the blogosphere itself, Liquid Journals accrue readers not because they have a choke-hold on distribution, as is the case with traditional journals, but because their readers find them to be uniquely qualified to filter a particular field.

On top of this is the open commenting model that has grown up around pre-print servers like arXiv.org, which serves the physics and mathematical community. In this model, paper are reviewed by everyone who cares to contribute -- the difference is that, in Liquid Journals, algorithms will track various measures of the skill and reputation of reviewers, allowing new ways to filter for scientific resources by the quality an entire community has decided they possess.