These are just some idealistic thoughts about a new type of Website
Perhaps a combination of arXiv and a heavily modified version of Stackexchange might be worth a try:
Papers
- Any User can submit papers, like asking questions here on MO
- Papers containing Errors, previously published results, etc. can be voted to close/delete
- A special System "Edit-Mode" to allow certain User Groups to edit a seperate copy of the paper (correcting mistakes) and allow the submitting User to undo his Mistakes and repost. Furthermore, this "Edit-Mode" will allow other Users to mark passages of a paper as correct.
- Papers will be given Points based on:
- The number of times it has been cited
- "Upvotes" weighted by the number of "Points" the voting User has
Papers will be concidered "reviewed" if the entire paper has been marked as correct via "Edit-Mode" by at least X number of Users with >Y number of Points
As a rule, papers are only allowed to be cited when they have reached the "reviewed" rank
Users
- Various groups of Users (Profs, Postdocs, Students, etc..). Certain groups need to be verified via PostIdent or some other mean. Users in these groups start out with a higher amount of Points
- Users gain Points by publishing high ranked papers, writing good reviews, resubmitting corrected Papers... (Basically like MO)
- Users can loose Points by plagarism or other wrongful behaviour
Peer-Review would still be in place. The main questions would be:
Would people bother reviewing other papers?
If there are enough people in this system, and this system has become the main source of Mathematical Papers, the reviewing process should work. Merely the fact that only reviewed papers are allowed to be cited should be enough to "get the ball rolling". I also believe that the reviewing process will be honest, as it is public. Furthermore, like here on MO, humans love achievements. People love gathering "Points", "Exp", or any other sort of trophies. So yes, I think this alone will motivate alot of people.
How to avoid "double posting"
As on MO, someone is bound to notice that a certain subject has already been researched. I even believe that this system will be even better stopping plagarism than the current peer-review Process.
The biggest problem would be, to get enough people to join this sort of Website. And this last point is why I think, my proposed website will most likely fail.
