Extending ArXiv.org to Achieve Open Peer Review and Publishing

TL;DR

This paper proposes an extension to arXiv.org that introduces open, signed peer reviews and a formal publication process to improve transparency, incentivize reviewers, and make scientific results more publicly accessible.

Contribution

It introduces a simple extension to arXiv.org enabling open peer review and formal publication, enhancing transparency and efficiency in scientific publishing.

Findings

Referees write public, signed reviews attached to preprints

Selected articles are elevated to 'published' status

The process increases transparency and incentivizes peer review

Abstract

Today's peer review process for scientific articles is unnecessarily opaque and offers few incentives to referees. Likewise, the publishing process is unnecessarily inefficient and its results are only rarely made freely available to the public. Here we outline a comparatively simple extension of arXiv.org, an online preprint archive widely used in the mathematical and physical sciences, that addresses both of these problems. Under the proposal, editors invite referees to write public and signed reviews to be attached to the posted preprints, and then elevate selected articles to "published" status.