Should the UK replace journals with a REF repository? | Times Higher Education (THE)

"There is a long-standing debate about whether the UK’s Research Excellence Framework is a waste of time and money given its insistence on re-assessing tens of thousands of papers that have already been reviewed by journals. Why not just base REF scores on journal rankings instead?

One answer is that, as Robert de Vries put it in a recent article for Times Higher Education, journal-administered peer review “sucks”. De Vries is conscious, though, that the obvious alternative to journals, post-publication review on subject repositories, might quickly descend into a social-media-style “attention-economy hellscape”, which would be even worse.

His solution is to oblige everyone who publishes on such platforms to undertake post-publication review to ensure that visibility is a function of merit. But I believe that a specific REF repository would be a better solution, eliminating reviewing redundancy while upholding high standards...."