There is no greater disregard of opportunity cost than in the world of academic peer review and publishing.

Our tax dollars fund 80% of research, which we should be able to see. As gatekeepers of the current model, publishing companies charge researchers to submit and review their work, then charge the masses to access their publications. Researchers are obstructed with high time and cost barriers, bounded by limitations of print publication, and inhibited by biases of a closed editorial process, while the public remains disconnected from the intricate ways their work affects our daily lives. Whether its the contents of our food, side effects of our medicine, or studies that determine our political and economic strategies, people should be able to access and learn about the actual research that shape our products, practices, and policies. Meritocracy aims to do for knowledge what the power grid did for electricity: provide direct and uniform access to the resource via infrastructure. The flagship product, Cloud Review System, is a self-publishing platform for research institutions that enables crowdsourced peer review. In cloud review, papers are published by the author and reviewed by many peers, and the by-product of this process is a live archive of research data, papers, and discussions freely accessible by anyone. Research findings are the building blocks of scholarly knowledge. They are used by businesses to develop new products and services. They are the origin of the materials taught in classrooms, and the information our representatives seek when they make policy decisions. By streamlining research throughput, the goal is to improve the speed, quality, and utility of research to drive progress in business development, online education, and evidence-based legislation. While securing funding is essential and developing a demonstrable prototype is an immediate need, a quest of this magnitude requires anyone with a resonant set of skills, knowledge, and passion. If you backcast from an ideal future, how would you envision modern peer review and publishing?

Cost of Opportunity
How do you define an innovation that provides ten times the benefits of its current placeholder at a tenth of the cost? One that launches an industry thats a generation behind into the next era - a niche enterprise with profound effects on society? It is time to have a real talk about academic peer review and publishing. My first job out of college was with a real estate development startup that embarked on a mission to build the worlds most sustainable city from ground up in the rainforests of Panama. This was a big claim and I was interested in how such a feat could be possible. It quickly became clear that what we needed, first and foremost, was the knowledge of the best research and the latest technologies, design principles that could incorporate them, engineering solutions to manifest them, and inhabitants who could understand and appreciate them. I wanted to gather such knowledge for every domain and component of a city, from architecture to renewable energy, farming to waste management, transportation to communal space design, and so on. I wanted to know how different solutions compared with one another, what other experts and professionals thought about them, and what their experiences were. I wanted to know which ones worked best in which combinations, for which purposes, under which conditions. Each one began with a google search and resulted in collections of scattered resources. I was uncertain about their quality and validity, frequently obstructed by paywalls, and often unsuccessful in directly contacting the originators of the materials. I later realized that the connections I was searching for werent abundant in the compartmentalized and entrenched world of peer review and publishing, and that the problem was a by-product of how we share scholarly knowledge. Today research is done is isolated groups, papers are funneled through the gates of publishers, and disseminated to subscribers. This is an industry where researchers are bound to a publish-or-perish culture and knowledge discovered using public tax dollars are restricted from open scrutiny and paywalled for educational access. The system is riddled with countless redundancies, uncaptured value, unjust costs, bureaucratic inefficiencies, and unaddressed concerns of unhappy researchers. Amidst overwhelming evidence for shortcomings of the current model and strengths of open, online alternatives, why does the process remain unchanged? Why cant an academic view all the supporting data, follow and engage in the review process, and collaborate with other impassioned peers in real time when learning about new research findings? Why should a researcher feel that she must keep her work secret until it is published? Why cant she view negative results from previous experiments that could potentially strengthen her theories and experimental design? Why should patients wait years for new research to be developed into drugs when the evaluation and verification parts the process could be accomplished significantly quicker and cheaper? If we look at the world of academia as one big agricultural enterprise, researchers farm new produce, distribution companies collect the products and sell them to the people. The people fund the harvest, distributors keep the profits, and researchers in return get more land and new tools to continue farming, also paid for by the people. The difference is, when the produce is digital knowledge, every person could get an exact copy at close to no cost. Researchers can share their seeds, tools, and experience to grow better products more efficiently. The public can eat healthier and prosper while the enterprise as a whole could operate more sustainably at a fraction of the cost. People can learn to grow food themselves, provide feedback on what tastes good, and ensure that the future generations will consume better goods.

I wondered if such an enterprise could exist in todays academia. I approached this challenge from a clean slate and asked, given the technologies available today, how can we best capture, evaluate, and share research output? What I learned is that there is neither a one-size-fits-all solution nor a universally agreeable approach, but an indispensable necessity for connectivity, synchrony, and access. I am convinced that the world of academia needs a common communication infrastructure. The solution I propose is a cloud-based network of publishing platforms that enable crowdpowered management and archival of scholarly knowledge; an open-sourced API to build upon with custom tools and plugins, much like an app store for open science; a financially sustainable model in which costs of hosting and maintenance are distributed among host institutions and use of the product remains free to the end user. I understood the true gravity of my convictions when I realized that the benefits of this solution are the opportunity costs of the current model. What if a cancer researcher who is doing clinical trials on patients could view negative results of previous studies and discover a pattern that could help omit certain subjects who otherwise would suffer? What if an editor missed a minor but grave mistake in the experiment that could be flagged by any reader, discussed in real time and resolved before the drug is developed and sold to patients, then retracted? What if a congressman who is reviewing a bill that would allow or prohibit fracking in New York could consult a community of experts and professionals, compare available data, and weigh the input of his constituents? What if the real estate developer in Panama could bring together leading researchers and passionate entrepreneurs in an open consortium to tackle a challenge that is beyond the reach of any single entity? We want to ensure not only that our products, practices, and policies are based on the most merited research, but that we can bear witness to the entire process. We want to learn and share new information and get involved if something interests or concerns us. We want to connect with like-minded individuals and collaborate for a shared cause. Ultimately, we want the power to make a difference. Meritocracy empowers the most merited pursuit. The decision-maker is not I, but the process. The employer is not I, but the vision. Im a genie, and my purpose is to enable a meritocracy. I can call it a company, but I want it to be a movement.

We dare dream that one day, Independent, informed, and proactive webizens, Bonded by mutual fate, acting as one, May unite upon a vision of society Empathetic and just, Resilient and adaptive, Truthful and self-sustaining; Such that civil discourse Praises cohesion over partisanship, In pursuit of synergy over compromise, For the well-being of life on earth; That a meritocratic sovereignty blooms As the leaves on branches of the government As the fourth anchor of checks and balances As the Advisory Branch of the People.