Ah that’s a really great idea! Thanks. I had never thought of this possibility. The reason it wouldn’t work given the current institutions of academia is that having peer-reviewed publications is an important bureaucratic thing in that it essentially qualifies you for jobs, so job search committees wouldn’t know how to evaluate candidates without them.

That said, I think the thing to do is just change that. If academics instead of thinking: what new thing can I say? Thought: what problem can I help solve? (which I take it is the open source mindset.) It’s possible things various disciplines could be much improved. Then you’d just have to force search committees to take into account this new way of conducting research.

Anyway, thanks again — that really is a great perspective and I’ll probably, with your permission and attributing it to you, make use of it when I work more on this issue.