Yes. Abolish peer review. Bring back editorial review. If it was good enough for Planck and Einstein it’s good enough for everyone.
> For instance, the Annalen der Physik, in which Einstein published his four famous papers in 1905, did not subject those papers to the same review process. The journal had a remarkably high acceptance rate (of about 90-95%). The identifiable editors were making the final decisions about what to publish. It is the storied editor Max Planck who described his editorial philosophy as:
> To shun much more the reproach of having suppressed strange opinions than that of having been too gentle in evaluating them.
90-95% publication rate might have worked in 1905 but it would not be feasible given the huge volume of papers now. A journal must provide curation because the majority of submissions it gets are terrible, and it’s too much work for an editor to do. Hence peer review.
It’s only too much work for an editor to do if you insist they don’t get paid, and maintain the same standards as at present. Full time editors who accept and reject, without revise and resubmit would be much faster and able to deal with many more papers. If twice as many useless papers get published as now that’s a very small price to pay. There are other possible models of editorial review but that’s one.
I suppose this full-time editing job would be in addition to their other full-time(-plus) job of actually being a scientist, which is of course necessary to ensure that they are qualified to review all these submissions ... ?
> For instance, the Annalen der Physik, in which Einstein published his four famous papers in 1905, did not subject those papers to the same review process. The journal had a remarkably high acceptance rate (of about 90-95%). The identifiable editors were making the final decisions about what to publish. It is the storied editor Max Planck who described his editorial philosophy as:
> To shun much more the reproach of having suppressed strange opinions than that of having been too gentle in evaluating them.