Whoa--Slashdot just posted this article about applying open source models to, among other things, the academic peer review process. The article was written by some members of the Young foundation and published on DEMOS.

From the formulation of public policy to more open forms of academic peer review, setting up mutual support groups for people facing similar health problems to collaborative forms of social innovation, the principles of open source promise to radically alter the we approach complex social problems.

The article talks a lot about Wikipedia as well, using it as a model for how academic peer review might be reformed. They also make some predictions:

In relation to academia there is another crucial point. In the past, academic journals provided the best way to disseminate work. Today they have become a barrier. As any user of Google Scholar soon discovers most work produced in public universities has to be paid for by ordinary citizens – often at very high rates in comparison with other information. These prices primarily exist to cover the direct publishing costs of journals. Yet in a web era academic journals have become largely obsolete – articles are searched for by search engines, not by journal title, and peer review can be organised in many ways other than through a journal.We expect that within a few years it may become a rule that all publicly funded research should be made available to all, free of charge, on the web.

Very true, very true...Fascinating read, really. This comes as a very refreshing read after my struggles with publishing in a commercial journal. Yet, we can't neglect the political pieces on the board. Many of us rely on these "barriers" to fortify themselves against the "others," those folks who haven't been given permission to speak in the academic community.