From PhilPapers forum Issues in the Profession, Misc:

2015-04-13
Generalized Peer-reviewing without Journals
Hi,
Starting roughly from the 1870's, philosophical journals were the only means of rapidly disseminating knowledge and/or make available the results of one's research to the public. This situation lasted until internet developed. Now knowledge can be disseminated in a click, research can be made available instantly, communities can be formed in which the degree of interactivity surpasses everything mankind knew before. So the existence of philosophical journals does not justify anymore in terms of dissemination of knowledge or forum for research. 

Philosophical journals have a very limited circulation and, instead of disseminating knowledge and research results, they store knowledge away from those who need it. In this way, only those living in Western countries, studying in major universities with rich libraries offering data-bases subscriptions can benefit. 

The only justification for the existence of philosophical journals nowadays is "quality". What is being published in our philosophical journals is supposed to be of quality - and the guarantee is a stiff process of selection, resting upon an important number of competing papers and, most importantly, on the peer-reviewing system. So "quality" justifies keeping research results away from (poor) people of people living outside Western world.  

But quality and wide accessibility can be reconciled. Here is how I see things. You want to publish on the internet an article. You forward it to someone you know, another philosopher, who will contact two or more other colleagues and send them your paper (anonymized) for review, then communicate to you the result of their evaluation. If all is good, you publish it, mentioning that it was reviewed by peers. In order to avoid intellectual dishonesty and imposture, there should be some data-base where the "middle-men" introduce the titles of the papers they received and that were peer-reviewed and positively evaluated. A data-base of reviewers, with their domains of competence could also be constructed easily. It's simple enough and I think it's feasible.

This would also diminish the capacity of the academic establishment of imposing trends in research and, thus, of controlling and instrumentalizing research for purposes other than academic.

What do you say? Shall we do it?