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Do referee reports/names get published alongside published papers in your field? They are starting to do that in my field, but it's still at the opt-in level.
Do you think that the journals would do this? I am certain they will always pursue proper attribution, but not to peer-reviewer annotation, because, I understand, that they are supposed to remain anonymous, even when declaring conflicts of interest.
If they didn’t the peer-review process would become much more political than it is already.
No, I haven't come across any journals in my field that do this. I'm not sure how much difference it would make unless the universities count referee contributions toward your tenure packet.
They are doing that with websites like medRxiv. That is a non-peer-reviewed publisher on the web. I think they are doing this with others, that I have not seen, but there have been a lot of these lapses in ethics and responsibility in the peer-reviewed journals lately. Perhaps this is due to the ethics of the founders of many of them.
There have been baby steps in econ in this direction, but I'm not connected enough to the mainstream anymore to be fully aware of what's going on anymore.
The thing to understand about academia is that for most fields it is a very small club.
One colleague of mine said, "To succeed in academia you have to be willing to spend the rest of your life talking to the same 10 people over and over again, and to get into the club you have to just do whatever they tell you to do."
Thus, the old boys (or girls) in each of these clubs have no reason to change what they're doing, because it worked for them and is working for them.
It sounds like a daisy-chain of amilkers. Yep, you can see that effect all over the place and it is very obvious who is kissing whose ass. It almost sounds like a military hierarchical situation for academics.
It's honestly a mixed bag.
I think most academics are genuinely interested in their subjects. So you can break into the club easily, and even become a leader in the club, if you make a genuine breakthrough in the field.
But the thing is, that's pretty rare. And for people who aren't skilled or lucky enough to make a major breakthrough, yeah you basically have to rely on getting the guys above you to like you.
Yes, true basic breakthroughs are few and far between with the current paradigm, therefore not many promoted to the top of the heap.
The scientific community is really behind the times. They are using archaic systems. Peer review is an outdated, inefficient system. Scientists and academics should take a page from the open source community and build their projects collaboratively and in public. There are plenty of tools now to do so.