My letter to Physics Today was just published in its issue in October, 2024. Hopefully, it’ll draw attention from a wider audience to the issues and a possible solution to these issues of peer review or evaluation systems in various research activities in STEM fields, including those in job applications, tenure review, refereed publications, and grant/facility proposals. The solution proposed in two papers, “A Robust Community-Based Credit System to Enhance Peer Review in Scientific Research” and “OePress: an Open ePrint and Rigorous Evaluation System for STEM “, will hopefully start a peer-review reform in basic research. By implementing a sophisticated credit- and role-based incentive mechanism, we could establish a new self-sustaining ecosystem for the entire scientific community. Rigorous science requires rigorous evaluation, and scientific innovation won’t develop efficiently until such a system is built.
