Despite seemingly favourable acceptance, the peer review system is constantly under fire and criticism (Campanario, 1996b; Campanario, 1998a, Campana­rio, 1998b). Critics often argue that it is an excessively costly and time devouring method, where referees' agreement is most of times little higher than by chance (Cicchetti, 1991). The system is vulnerable to misconduct, plagiarism and breach of confidentiality. Some of the most cited papers of all times were rejected by referees (Campanario, 1996a). Theories now widely accepted in biological, biomedical (Campanario, 1993), economics (Gans & Shepherd, 1994) and other sciences were rejected and considered unacceptable by referees (Nissani, 1995). At least 35 articles that would eventually earn the Nobel Prize and fame for their authors were outrightly rejected during the initial inspection by reviewers (Campanario, 1995; Campanario, in revision).

            Many scholars have suggested using modern information technologies in the academic publishing system. There are some advantages, for example, it speeds up the editorial process and cuts the excruciating waiting period. Unfortunately, it appears that none of them propose deep changes of the peer review system. Thus, according the new proposals, new technologies would be used to play the same old tune. However, would it not be desirable that journals actively compete and search for good manuscripts via computerized networks? Under the current system authors compete for journal space. Academic journals passively await the manuscripts but if authors send mediocre manuscripts they have to publish mediocre or even unacceptable papers in order to stay in business. The situation is favourable to leading journals since they keep receiving high impact papers.

             In short, a Central Facility (or Metajournal) could be made available to any scholar who wishes to communicate some relevant results about his research work (Campanario, 1997). The metajournal could be organized by disciplines or knowledge areas, in a similar way as the USENET facility installed on the Internet is organized by topics. The prospective author could submit an abstract or he could submit a full manuscript to the metajournal. Journal editorial boards could routinely scan this Metajournal to seek out exceptional, high impact, and innovative manuscripts. As soon as one of these extraordinary manuscripts is located, editors could clue the authors to publish the masterpiece. The potential author could feel free to choose the most adequate journal in which to publish his or her scientific contribution. Thus, the individual task of shopping around for an acceptance could be eliminated for all practical reasons and left totally in the hands of interested journals.  

            With an advent of this new system a new role may appear in science: the journal scanner or journal scout (Campanario, 1997). The mission of this editorial board member would be to seek out and procure manuscripts for the journal. Of course, the new system I propose can perfectly coexist with the traditional editorial and peer review system: the usual medium status science could still rely on the current editorial process. Having many journal scanners scurrying the Metajournal for good manuscripts, the chances that significant, innovative and unorthodox but potentially revolutionary manuscripts get sidetracked by some unaware referee are lower. Another advantage is that, using some vigorous editorial policies plus good scouting teams, even modest journals could manage to fish out some good manuscripts and with some time and effort, improve their prestige and impact factors.

            Some security measures could prevent misuse of the Facility. For example, each prospective author should send to the managers of the Metajournal a signed form authorized by the representatives of his employment. Public key cryptography could help to avoid plagiarism.  Using the Metajournal's public key access code, the prospective author can encrypt the manuscript in a way that only journal scanners in possession of the keys and decoders could discern such text. Another solution consists of recording the identity of journal scouts who read a given submission thus making that person responsible for security of submitted paper. In addition, authors could choose not to encrypt their contributions, so, the priority over their discoveries could be fully recognized and publicly registered.

            This new system would also make referees more accounta­ble for their actions and commitments. Using digital signatures a given referee could "sign" his report and still preserve his anonymity. Using the public key code of a given referee, any author could verify that this referee actually wrote a given report, a fact that even the referee in question would not be able to deny. Referees' reports could be logged into an electronic journal (The Journal of Referee Reports) and made available to authors for a routine access (Campanario, 1995). Perhaps with time, authors would be able to recognize efficient, knowledgeable and helpful referees. Maybe then they could be appointed by journal editors to serve as special scout force or scanners, qualified to screen all incoming scientific contributions. Nevertheless the decision to reveal his identity would then become a sole prerogative of the referee. Another possibility exists, anybody could serve as a freelance referee to judge contributions that were to be sent to the Metajournal in an open format. Will ever highly qualified freelance referees perform better than journal referees?.

References

            Campanario, J.M. 1993. Consolation for the scientist: Sometimes it is hard to publish papers that area later highly cited Social Studies of Science 23: 342-362.

            Campanario, J.M. 1995. Commentary on influential books and journal articles initially rejected because of negative referees' evaluations Science Communication 16: 304-325.

            Campanario, J.M. 1996a. Have referees rejected some of the most-cited articles of all times? Journal of the American Society for Information Sciences 47: 302-310.

            Campanario, J.M. 1996b. The competition for journal space among referees, editors and other authors and its influence on journal’s impact factor. Journal of the American Society for Information Sciences 47: 184-192.

            Campanario, J.M. 1997. The journal scout, The Scientist 11:9.

            Campanario, J.M. 1998a. Peer review for journals as it stands today-Part 1. Science Communication, 19, 181-211.

            Campanario, J.M. 1998b. Peer review for journals as it stands today-Part 2. Science Communication, 19, 277-306.

            Campanario, J.M. In revision. Rejecting Nobel class papers and resisting Nobel class discoveries.

            Cicchetti, D.V. 1991. The reliability of peer review for manuscript and grant submissions: A cross-disciplinary investiga­tion The Behavioural and Brain Sciences 14: 119-186.

            Gans, J.S., Shepherd, G.B. 1994. How are the mighty fallen: Rejected classic articles by leading economists Journal of Economic Perspectives 8: 165-179.

            Nissani, M. 1995. The plight of the obscure innovators in Science Social Studies of Science 25: 165-183.