It seems like "Selecting trusted experts" alone would defer more to human subjectivity and biases than would be necessary if objective measures were utilized as much as possible.
Existing community/expertise based moderation and reputation systems might not be directly transferable or adequate. But it shows there are new ways to think about more decentralized measures of reputation that are new to this century and haven't been tried. New ways that may be preferable to a small group of kingmakers.
I think the biggest problem is leadership and cooperation of community to try something different. It's not just that there is no person who can mandate these things, it's that multiple constituencies have widely diverging interests, i.e. authors, universities, corporations, journals.
I understand why it seems that nominally objective measures would be better. But I don't think cross-field, non-gameable objective measures of research quality are practically possible
I also don't think it's a problem that different groups have different interests, etc. As I say elsewhere, I think that diversity is the solution.
You could be right, but I don't see how it can be known with any confidence until a few approaches are given extended good faith trials. There are anecdotal examples supporting both scenarios and the problem simply seems too unknowable and important not to test drive whatever the top 2 or 3 approaches end up being.
>I also don't think it's a problem that different groups have different interests, etc.
I don't see how you can disagree that cooperation of community to try something different is not a major hurdle.
How many years has it been since important issues in the academic process were widely known? How much success in adoption has there been to date, regarding any fundamental changes?
I doubt there's a single solution, so I think trying to get people in many, many fields to coordinate will just slow down improvement. If anything, I think the drive to centralize and homogenize, which is part of managerialism, is a big part of some of the prominent problems in academia.
Existing community/expertise based moderation and reputation systems might not be directly transferable or adequate. But it shows there are new ways to think about more decentralized measures of reputation that are new to this century and haven't been tried. New ways that may be preferable to a small group of kingmakers.
I think the biggest problem is leadership and cooperation of community to try something different. It's not just that there is no person who can mandate these things, it's that multiple constituencies have widely diverging interests, i.e. authors, universities, corporations, journals.