Peer review is great, but it can be a rather inefficient evaluation mechanism:
– Should good reviewers receive more weight than bad reviewers? We can operationally define good based on how well a reviewer approximates the mean behavior across reviews.
– Shouldn’t authors–particularly, established ones–be allowed / expected to put their credibility on the line when they publish? Again, that could take some of the onus off of reviewers, since authors will have an incentive to filter their own work more harshly as their reputation increases.
I suppose the current system works, but it does seem wasteful.
Peer review is great, but it can be a rather inefficient evaluation mechanism:
– Should good reviewers receive more weight than bad reviewers? We can operationally define good based on how well a reviewer approximates the mean behavior across reviews.
– Shouldn’t authors–particularly, established ones–be allowed / expected to put their credibility on the line when they publish? Again, that could take some of the onus off of reviewers, since authors will have an incentive to filter their own work more harshly as their reputation increases.
I suppose the current system works, but it does seem wasteful.
p.s. this issue has also come up on Panos’s blog.