Figure 4.

Post-publication system. (A) A paper in its complete form under the proposed publishing process. Every paper will be comprised first of the manuscript itself (green square). This manuscript will have a standard format comprised of the familiar components along with the editorial board summary and ratings. The manuscript will be stable over time and none of its components subject to change. Associated with this manuscript will be a set of statistics (yellow circle) that include any additional ratings from the field collected post-publication and continually updated counts of its citations and downloads. A forum will also be attached to the manuscript where members of the field can post their own detailed comments on the paper and authors have the opportunity to respond. Members of the field may also pose theoretical and methodological questions that can be answered either by the authors or any other member of the field. Finally, the manuscript also has a literature valence (large blue circle), comprised of its citations and those papers which have cited it as well as topics and uncited work deemed by either the board, the authors, or the field to be related. The valence also includes ID numbers for the authors, editorial board member who provided the summary, and the reviewers. (B) Currently, a literature search generates a relatively unstructured list of papers, organized by author or subject heading. The literature valence will allow for dynamic organizations of the literature based on the needs of a particular researcher. (C) For example, organizing the papers in (B) by citation and topic might reveal that there were actually two sub-fields within the list. One a small set of distinct closely related papers, while the other is a large complex set, centered on a single paper. (D) This organization might differ entirely when organized by the method used, revealing a different set of relationships amongst the papers.