Thread by @bengoldacre

Here's my proposal:

A Google Docs science journal.

You submit your paper by sharing with "Anyone can comment" to the editors. They send this to reviewers. Everyone writes comments. You respond to comments. The editors read the comments and add to the discussion...

... until they're ready to click "resolve" on them.

Then when everyone's happy you change the doc permissions to "anyone can view" and get on with your life. The title and link are added to another google doc called "Contents".

Now. Let me tell you why this is a good idea...

...

1. It will not take 100 million years to do each step.

2. Nobody will ever say "please upload the figures at 300dpi"

3. Or "please remove the tables, put them in a separate file, and upload that thru our terrible website"

To be clear, I'm not suggesting a free for all..

... we'd still have all the same reviewers, and editors, and rigor (fwiw).

But 90% of the administrative labour around journal publication is simply driving a kind of fetishism. A fiddle and fuss that simply isn't warranted or necessary, persisting because of market failure.