Extending ArXiv.org to Achieve Open Peer Review and Publishing

Abstract: Today's peer review process for scientific articles is unnecessarily opaque and offers few incentives to referees. Likewise, the publishing process is unnecessarily inefficient and its results are only rarely made freely available to the public. Here we outline a comparatively simple extension of arXiv.org, an online preprint archive widely used in the mathematical and physical sciences, that addresses both of these problems. Under the proposal, editors invite referees to write public and signed reviews to be attached to the posted preprints, and then elevate selected articles to "published" status.