Today I launched a new website, www.paprss.org, "Public Access Peer Review for the Social Sciences." Here are the problems it seeks to solve.
Historically, there were three fundamental rationales for academic journals. They disseminated work, they signaled the quality of work, and they subjected manuscripts to an editorial process that in theory improved them.
Technology has rendered the dissemination function obsolete. In fact, by placing papers behind paywalls, academic journals often inhibit rather than promote the dissemination of research.
Quality signaling is now and has always been imperfect. Editorial decisions hinge on two basic questions: whether the research is competently executed, and whether it is of interest to the journal's readership. Many well-conceived and well-executed studies are rejected on the grounds that they are not projected to be of interest to a journal's readership. This projection is based on a tiny sample of readers, in many cases a single journal editor. Technology now presents us with the means to allow the readers in a field to decide what is of interest to the field, rather than a small non-random sample.
The editorial process may or may not improve the quality of a finished paper. It certainly takes time. Top journals in economics subject authors to a process that can stretch on for years and involve multiple rounds of revision. The back-and-forth negotiations over edits are hidden from public view. Reviewers may request revisions that a sound majority of readers would consider unwise, but authors have no mechanism to appeal to a wider readership. Reviewers, hidden behind a veil of anonymity, may exhibit various forms of bias or harbor undisclosed conflicts of interest.
PAPRSS seeks to give researchers the opportunity to receive referee report-style feedback in a public forum, where non-anonymous commenters can rebut or reinforce reviewer suggestions and authors can provide updates. It is closer in spirit to a conference session with discussant comments, as reviewers do not hide their identities and make comments for the public and not solely for the author. As in the conference format, authors will have an opportunity to respond to a posted review, and others will have the opportunity to post (moderated) comments. Authors can revise papers in response to reviews and comments. Moderators and editors on the site will encourage civility and constructive dialogue in all communications. All users -- authors, reviewers, and commenters -- will be asked to declare relevant conflicts of interest as a prerequisite for participating in conversation about a manuscript.
PAPRSS is intended to supplement the standard journal publication process. It will not make up-or-down publication decisions on manuscripts, it will only post reviews for those manuscripts. It does not intend to secure distribution rights for work, only to provide links to work posted elsewhere. It is an "aggregator" rather than a publisher. The highest value of PAPRSS will be for work that has yet to complete the peer review process. Assistant professors coming close to their tenure review may value PAPRSS for providing more rapid independent signals of work quality than the traditional peer review process. In fact, in its initial roll-out PAPRSS will only consider posting reviews of junior scholars approaching a promotion review (whether on tenure track or not).
When a manuscript reviewed on the PAPRSS site is accepted for publication, the published may require the removal of non-paywalled links. In such a scenario, PAPRSS will continue to feature a post regarding a manuscript, but link to the official paywall.
For readers, PAPRSS will provide curated sets of links to papers of interest by subfield, with short reviews providing information that might help inform decisions to read or to place on reading lists.
If you think this is at all a useful idea, PAPRSS needs both supply and demand. Senior scholars are encouraged to volunteer to be available to write blog post-like reviews. Eligible authors are encouraged to request reviews for their work.