Disaggregating quality judgements

The notion of quality is analysed for its functional roots as a social heuristic for reusing others’ quality judgements and
hence aiding choice. This is applied to the context of academic publishing, where the costs of publishing have greatly decreased,
but the problem of finding the papers one wants has become harder. This paper suggests that instead of relying on generic
quality judgements, such as those delivered by journal reviewers, that the maximum amount of judgemental information be preserved
and then made available to potential readers to help them find papers that meet their particular needs. The suggestion is that: multidimensional quality data be captured on review of papers, this information is stored
on a database, and then used to filter papers according to the criteria set by the searcher—personalising the quality filter.
In other words the quality judgements and subsequent use are maintained in a disaggregated form, maintaining the maximum informational
context of the judgements for future use. The advantages, disadvantages, challenges and possible variations of this proposal
are discussed.