I spent 5 minutes or so looking at this. So I may be wrong. But it looks like their primary concern happens to be government making publications available for free online download rather than through journals that cost money. It seems to be that this would be a step in the right direction. I think many people in academia realize that the journal/conference method of publication is broken -- for the following reasons:
-- Turnaround time (esp for journals) is unreasonably long
-- Authors usually dont know who their reviewers are. Comments are anonymous
-- Authors dont have a chance to give a rebuttal. A rejection is final and binding
I think a digg/reddit style of weighted karma would work much better. Weighted = authors with greater influence in the community have greater say in whether or not a paper gets published. Comments can be non anonymous and authors have a chance at rebuttal which means that they have an opportunity to influence opinion and votes as the paper is being reviewed.
The downside of not having such a system in place is painfully obvious to anyone who has spent some time in academia I think. Even prestigious conferences such as ACM SIGCOMM have often been accused of running as cliques.
I think a digg/reddit style of weighted karma would work much better. Weighted = authors with greater influence in the community have greater say in whether or not a paper gets published. Comments can be non anonymous and authors have a chance at rebuttal which means that they have an opportunity to influence opinion and votes as the paper is being reviewed.
The downside of not having such a system in place is painfully obvious to anyone who has spent some time in academia I think. Even prestigious conferences such as ACM SIGCOMM have often been accused of running as cliques.