Network-based statistics for a community driven transparent publication process

Abstract

The current publishing system with its merits and pitfalls is a mending topic for debate among scientists of various disciplines. Editors and reviewers alike, both face difficult decisions about the judgment of new scientific findings. Increasing interdisciplinary themes and rapidly changing dynamics in method development of each field make it difficult to be an "expert" with regard to all issues of a certain paper. Although unintended, it is likely that misunderstandings, human biases and even outright mistakes can play an unfortunate role in final verdicts. We propose a new community driven publication process that is based on network statistics to make the review, publication and scientific evaluation process more transparent. © 2012 Zimmermann, Roebroeck, Uludag, Sack, Formisano, Jansma, De weerd and Goebel.