Referee Introduction
At Phi•nønce Labs, we’re proud to introduce our latest initiative: Project Referee. Our mission is to tackle the numerous issues plaguing the current academic peer-review system, such as inefficiency, bias, gatekeeping, and even fraud. By leveraging advanced technologies like open pre-print repositories, AI transformer models, permissionless blockchains, and homomorphic encryption, we aim to create a fair, transparent, and unified system for assigning reliability scores to research papers.
The concept behind Project Referee is inspired by several successful, innovative approaches to solving complex problems. By drawing on these proven models, we’re confident that we can make a significant impact on the world of academic research:
- Wikipedia: Much like the popular online encyclopedia, Referee will be a collaborative platform, open to anyone from around the world to review, comment, and perform other review services. However, unlike Wikipedia, Referee will incentivize contributions through rewards, encouraging a more engaged and active community.
- Cybersecurity Bug-Bounty Programs: Similar to how bug-bounty programs have transformed cybersecurity, Referee will allow bounties to be set for identifying weaknesses in research papers. This system not only incentivizes researchers to find flaws but also encourages the development of automated search and reporting tools.
- Software Dependency Management Tools: By quickly alerting authors to identified flaws and adjusting reliability scores for papers citing flawed research, Referee will function similarly to dependency management tools, ensuring that vulnerabilities in the academic ecosystem are minimized.
- Cones and Rods: Drawing inspiration from the human visual system, Referee combines AI bots and human expertise to maximize efficiency and accuracy in the review process. AI bots (rods) will perform initial evaluations of vast numbers of pre-print papers, while human specialists (cones) will provide in-depth analysis for selected papers.
We believe that Project Referee has the potential to revolutionize the academic peer-review process, making it more efficient, transparent, and fair. By taking the best elements from proven models and adapting them to the world of research, we hope to create a system that not only benefits individual researchers but also advances human knowledge as a whole.
You can download a longer description of the project here: Download report. Consider contacting us in our quest to reshape the future of academic research.