[not downvoted—I’m happy that people are thinking about and exploring options like this, even though I don’t think this particular application is very compelling. ]
I think Elizabeth has given the primary reason that this won’t work—neither of the problems you list (expensive and often not replicable) are really addressed. Those are problems with refereeing and intentional scarcity/prestige mechanics, not with a lack of auditable sequence of events.
In fact, most of the papers I read are freely published via a very simple mechanism: preprints on the author’s web pages. I don’t worry that they’re not bit-for-bit identical with what the relevant journal published, nor that there’s some fraud about when something happened.
[not downvoted—I’m happy that people are thinking about and exploring options like this, even though I don’t think this particular application is very compelling. ]
I think Elizabeth has given the primary reason that this won’t work—neither of the problems you list (expensive and often not replicable) are really addressed. Those are problems with refereeing and intentional scarcity/prestige mechanics, not with a lack of auditable sequence of events.
In fact, most of the papers I read are freely published via a very simple mechanism: preprints on the author’s web pages. I don’t worry that they’re not bit-for-bit identical with what the relevant journal published, nor that there’s some fraud about when something happened.