o'Peer

Building Trust Democratically

In a nutshell

O'Peer is a "toy" demo of a cybernetic, democratic approach to Open Peer Review. It assumes all submissions are already freely available on the Internet; it recognizes (but may or may not reveal) the identity of every author/reviewer; and it (eventually) accumulates the "credibility index" of all registered participants by keeping a running average of their evaluations by others, weighted by the others' credibility in the aspects evaluated. See http://opeer.org/oPeer-foo.pdf

Overview

Type of project

Project
Start date

2014-01-08
Operated by

Jess H. Brewer
Listing status

Unverified
Website

http://opeer.org

Goals and intentions

The original idea (insofar as it IS original) is depicted as a presentaion at

http://opeer.org/oPeer-foo.pdf

The possible extension of the concept to broader societal impact is discussed at

http://jick.ca/?cat=3

and at https://medium.com/predict/trust-2c9841f33994

Functions of the project

Areas of innovation

What is reviewed

Review of data or code

Yes

Types of outputs

Format of review

Process

Transparency

Review features

Notes

The entire process is managed cybernetically as a database of submissions, reviews and "credibility indices" or reviewers. All authors and referees are free to either identify themselves publicly or remain anonymous to readers, but the computer knows who they are. This is necessary in order to accumulate a "credibility index" for every author/reviewer based on others' evaluations of their submissions, reviews and comments. Algorithms will have to be refined and protected constantly to discourage "gaming" of the system.
Eligible reviewers/editors

Anyone registered with the system can submit, review or comment. Their reviews and comments will carry "weight" based on their own accumulated credibility.
Tags or badges

No
Criteria for inclusion

All submissions and reviews will be open access on the Internet. Rather than "tags and badges", each registered participant will, over time, accumulate detailed "credibility indices" based on others' evaluations of their submissions, reviews and comments.
Cost

0
Explanation of cost

Operation of this database and its algorithms on a societalo scale will be expensive, but it should be free to all users. This will obviously require governmental support.

Results

Number of scholarly outputs commented on

10-100
Results summary

So far almost no one has used my "toy" demo site -- luckily for me, as I'm running it on my own server for free! It's meant to merely illustrate how this might be done on a grand scale if the idea catches on. With luck, someone will "steal" my rudimentary implementation and turn it into a game-changing service. Whether they make money from that or get the government to fund it is of no concern to me.
Source of data

The database on the website itself.
Results URL

http://opeer.org

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