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A peer review community driven platform for the publication of scholarly research would reduce publication biases held by larger journals, ensure fair compensation for peer reviewers, and reduce time from submission to publication of scholarly work. Providing an environment in which much of the current editorial work done by journals is automated including type setting, formatting, and peer review matching would significantly reduce costs associated with publishing an article. Providing peer reviewers with compensation for the time taken to review an article reduces the delay between the submission and first response. Furthermore, making such reviews public after publication increases transparency and integrity in the peer review process. Allowing reviewers to receive credit for peer review that maintains anonymity at the level of review further incentivizes researchers to engage with the peer review process. Allowing moderation of published content, i.e. retractions for falsification, plagiarism, or other misconduct to be handled by the community rather than an editorial staff would reduce costs associated with content management. We therefore propose a solution to the issues that have plagued scholarly publishing for last few decades, Lexature, a peer review and scholarly publishing platform that matches peer reviewers with articles and vice-versa, and provides a single repository for all scientific work to be freely accessed by the public and in which the costs associated with publishing an article are directly related to the cost of the peer review process.
The scholarly publishing landscape faces significant challenges that hinder the effective dissemination of academic research. A small oligopoly of publishing houses dominates the market, implementing pricing practices that burden researchers with substantial publication and access fees despite minimal distribution costs in the digital age. These publishers prioritize articles likely to generate media attention over those with broader scientific impact, creating a bias in the academic record.
While researchers have developed alternative publication mechanisms, such as preprint repositories like arXiv and bioRxiv, to accelerate information sharing, these platforms lack crucial quality control mechanisms, including rigorous peer review and editorial oversight. The traditional peer review process itself suffers from significant delays, often extending months or years, as reviewers struggle to balance these uncompensated duties with their primary research responsibilities.
To address these challenges, we propose a novel peer review framework designed to reduce publication timelines from months to days while maintaining rigorous quality standards. Our solution emphasizes transparency in publication fees, guarantees open access distribution, and ensures fair compensation for all participating researchers. This approach aims to modernize academic publishing while preserving the integrity of scholarly communication.
Because there are ultimately many different formats a scholarly work could be submitted to a journal that ultimately differ from the journal's publication format, it is necessary for journals to employ individuals to handle the formatting and typesetting of a work. However, this adds additional overhead and delay to publication and may require back and forth between the author and the journal. We have therefore created a WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) editor for Lexature that allows authors to copy and paste or upload a docx of their article, and make additional typesetting and formatting changes within this editor until they are happy with the result. The editor is built to only allow certain formatting options and abilities so that all articles published on Lexature share general formatting principles.
Lexature uses state of the art AI to create an effective recommender system that is highly attuned to each scientific discipline we have released it for, presently only Molecular Biology though we plan to roll out the system for all disciplines as we begin our launch. Our system is capable of taking an article and identifying from hundreds of thousands of researchers a few highly qualified and active individuals capable of performing an in depth and skilled peer review. Automatically identifying peer reviewers based on the entire context of an article makes peer review matching take only minutes rather than requiring hours of manual citation lookup, affiliation cross-checking to ensure no conflicts of interest or affiliation biases between authors and peer reviewers, and no need for editorial expertise inside a specific domain to validate that referees have the necessary background needed to review an article. The automation of this step alone significantly reduces the bandwidth limitations current journals have in processing an article.
Lexature implements a transparent, cost-based pricing model for article processing that directly reflects operational expenses and reviewer compensation. The platform's fee structure consists of a fixed processing charge strategically allocated to sustain both platform operations and quality peer review:
Infrastructure and Development Allocation
This component supports essential technical infrastructure, including server maintenance, platform development, and operational staff, ensuring continuous platform reliability and evolution.
Peer Review Compensation
The majority of the processing fee (75%) is allocated to peer review, distributed among three qualified referees selected through Lexature's reviewer matching system.
Empirical evidence suggests that monetary compensation for peer review services significantly reduces time-to-first-response in academic publishing. Lexature's integrated peer review system, combined with this incentive structure, enables a substantially compressed review timeline compared to traditional publishing models. The platform's architecture and compensation framework are designed to facilitate comprehensive manuscript evaluation within days to weeks, rather than the conventional weeks-to-months timeline typical in academic publishing.
Lexature maintains a rigorous commitment to publication efficiency while upholding high academic standards. The platform's operational framework targets a 30-day submission-to-publication timeline for manuscripts meeting quality thresholds. This accelerated process is achieved through systematic optimization of workflow elements, including efficient reviewer assignment, incentivized review completion, and streamlined manuscript processing, while maintaining robust quality control measures.
The purposes of peer review are multifaceted and include quality control, error detection, scientific consensus building, and improvement; however, some of these motivations are lost or minimized if the content of the reviews are hidden from the public or not directly published alongside the article. Lexature therefore publishes a history of an article showing each draft and the content of each review submitted against that draft. Although some publishers and journals have committed to doing the same, many have not and we want Lexature to be a foundational paradigm shift in the level of transparency in scholarly publishing, so we have created an incredibly intuitive interface for reviewing the entire draft history alongside the reviews for each article that is submitted to Lexature. It is our goal with this feature to readily improve the integrity of every article published on Lexature.
Lexature believes that the peer review and scientific discovery process doesn't end after publication but continues long afterward with every researcher who reads the article and incorporates its discoveries into their own work. Therefore, every article includes a discussion page in which other researchers can ask questions to authors, or discuss methodology or other concerns or interests they have about an article. Oftentimes this sort of communication was done privately between the listed corresponding author and an interested researcher, but allowing these sorts of questions and discussions to be asked in public means everyone can contribute to and benefit from the answers.
Academic recognition systems have traditionally focused exclusively on publication metrics, overlooking substantial scholarly contributions through peer review and community engagement. This narrow focus creates an imbalance in academic incentive structures, failing to acknowledge the significant intellectual and temporal investment required for comprehensive manuscript review and scholarly discourse. Drawing insights from successful decentralized moderation systems, particularly the Stack Overflow paradigm, Lexature implements a reputation framework that quantifies and rewards comprehensive on platform engagement and contribution. This system enables the progressive allocation of platform privileges based on demonstrated expertise and community contribution.
As users accumulate reputation through sustained platform engagement, they gain access to an expanding suite of moderation tools. This graduated access model ensures that platform governance remains in the hands of demonstrably committed and competent community members. The system creates a self-reinforcing cycle where increased participation leads to greater governance authority, which in turn promotes more active community stewardship.
This innovative approach to academic reputation management represents a significant departure from traditional academic metrics, providing a more comprehensive framework for recognizing scholarly contribution. By implementing transparent, community-driven governance mechanisms, Lexature establishes a merit-based system that more accurately reflects the diverse ways in which researchers contribute to scientific discourse.
Lexature represents a paradigm shift in scholarly communication, offering an innovative digital platform that integrates peer review, open access publication, and community governance. This platform addresses critical inefficiencies in traditional academic publishing by facilitating direct connections between authors and reviewers while maintaining cost-effective pathways to publication.
The platform's primary objective is to accelerate the dissemination and validation of scientific discoveries, thereby optimizing the iterative process of knowledge building in the scientific community. By reducing the temporal gap between discovery and publication, Lexature enables researchers to build upon verified findings more rapidly, potentially accelerating the overall pace of scientific advancement.
Central to Lexature's architecture is its commitment to transparent scholarly discourse. The platform provides robust infrastructure for open dialogue surrounding published works, fostering an environment where rigorous questioning and methodical truth-seeking drive scientific progress. This approach ensures that scholarly critique and discussion are accessible to the broader scientific community, enhancing the quality and reliability of published research.
A distinctive feature of Lexature's model is its emphasis on community moderation. Unlike traditional publishing frameworks where editorial decisions are primarily controlled by publishing houses or commercial entities, Lexature empowers the active scientific community to collectively determine publication merit. This democratization of the peer review process ensures that research validation and dissemination are guided by scientific value rather than commercial interests.