Maven Index

A Maven Index is a reputation metric derived from the success of an individual in knowledgeably assessing the quality of other peoples scientific work.

This is a completely different, and arguably more useful skill, than the ability to produce new and novel scientific work yourself. As such a Maven Index score bares no relationship to a Peer Index or Citation Index score.

The idea I am proposing here is to add this form of metric to an open peer review process such that the success of an referees ability to identify quality is incentivised.

Given the accurate and provable recording of Timestamped Author Contributions, this Social Publication Graph can be augmented by a number of quality assessments which are both useful to the contributing author, their peers, and with which the wider community can construct valuable metrics.

For the maven Index, we can use prediction markets, and time based feedback loops, to match successful papers and authors to the early stage rating / judgement of a referee. The ability to successfully predict the value of a paper, would feed back negatively or positively to the referee's Maven Index.

Malcolm Gladwell used the term Maven in his book The Tipping Point, to describe those who are intense gatherers of information and impressions, and so are often the first to pick up on new or nascent trends.

Mavens may act most effectively when in collaboration with social influencers - i.e., those people who have wide network of casual acquaintances by whom they are trusted, often a network that crosses many social boundaries and groups.