Slashdot Mirror
Web of Trust For Scientific Publications
An anonymous reader writes "PGP and GnuPG have been utilizing webs of trust to establish authenticity without a centralized certificate authority for a while. Now, a new tool seeks to extend the concept to include scientific publications. The idea is that researchers can review and sign each others' works with varying levels of endorsement, and display the signed reviews with their vitas. This creates a decentralized social network linking researchers, papers, and reviews that, in theory, represents the scientific community. It meshes seamlessly with traditional publication venues. One can publish a paper with an established journal, and still try to get more out of the paper by asking colleagues to review the work. The hope is that this will eventually provide an alternative method for researchers to establish credibility."
This is exactly what Wikipedia needs to implement.
This will allow it to overcome the credibility problems that it has.
What is important is *anonymous* peer review. There needs to be a mechanism for new scientists to question established researchers without lasting detriment to their careers. On another note, what I thought this article might be about was CiteULike, which is great. Any academics should check it out
Scientific publications already have a web of trust in the list of cites at the bottom. Publications don't get cited unless they are notable in some way.