The current refereeing system in academia is frustrating. You get an idea. You write a paper. You send it off, and then you wait. And then you wait some more. Suddenly, a year has passed and you haven’t heard anything.
It’s hard to blame anyone for this process. Academic editors don’t get paid for their service to the discipline, and they have a hard time finding referees, because referees are also refereeing out of the goodness of their hearts.
Sympoze will fix all of this. The idea is simple: we crowd-source peer review. This will retain the same high standards of traditional peer review. The only difference is that it will involve more peers. And involving more peers in the process eliminates a number of the elements that make the traditional process so frustrating.
Reduced Referee Burden
The real burden of refereeing is seldom the actual reading of the paper. Referees can often read papers quickly and decide if it’s worthy of publication. It’s the sitting down to justify your decision to the editor and the author that can be a daunting task that is easy to put off. By crowd-sourcing peer-review, referees need not worry about typing up a detailed referee report. Referees can read the paper and vote for acceptance or rejection and write one or two comments about the paper, instead of an entire report.
Better Feedback
But this doesn’t sacrifice the author’s chances of getting good feedback. It actually improves the chances. At the end of the process, the author will still get a substantive detailed referee report that was collaboratively written by many of their peers.
Reduced Review Time
The idea behind crowd-sourcing is that it would be easy to find a pocket of qualified referees. Currently, editors waste an enormous amount of time trying to find a referee. First, the editor contacts a potential referee and waits for a response. Sometimes they wait for a while only to have their request declined and must start the process all over. And they have to do this for about 500+ submissions a year. With the crowd-source model, the entire pool of referees is automatically notified the moment a paper in their area comes in. Those who are available that week can step up and referee, and those who are busy can pass. No time is wasted finding a referee.
Eliminate Bad Referee Luck
This process will reduce the influence of a biased or overworked referee. Sometimes referees are overworked and don’t give your paper the care it deserves. Sometimes referees are unusually biased or hostile against a particular position. Crowd-sourcing mitigates the impact of a biased or overworked referee because more qualified people are involved in the process.
Open-Access
All papers that go through our process will, once accepted, be immediately and always available in a public area of our site – for free!
Print Volumes
But we will not sacrifice traditional distribution models. The open-access papers will periodically be published in a more traditional print medium complete with DOI/ISBN numbers, and will also be available for optional purchase.
Referee Rewards
We will go to great lengths to acknowledge and reward the hard work of diligent referees. If you referee for Sympoze, you will be doing an enormous service to your discipline – and this should not go unnoticed.