Abstract
Traditional methods of peer review are coming under strain as the volume of manuscripts and the number of forums for manuscript submission rise. These pressures can result in poorer quality reviews, extended publication times, and higher costs to the organisations that fund research. In this paper we describe a method for reducing reviewing burden, expediting feedback and shortening publication times. Furthermore, by its nature, the method produces leading (as opposed to lagging/trailing) publication metrics for authors and the manuscripts they write, and we show how these metrics can be used by search engines to provide more useful orderings of search results. Finally, we show how the underlying mechanism of the method can be used to improve search in domains beyond research publishing, such as the web as a whole.
