I think we can learn from the OS community, but this requires changing the incentive system of academia.
Two ideas:
* Research papers should be living documents that are properly versioned; updates should get reviewed again. This obviously means that incremental improvements to papers and reviewing need to result in something tangible for one's CV. The versioning makes sure one can still point to a specific revision of a paper. Of course, updates should consider the implications of changes carefully (as is the case for software). For example, I might get familiar with a paper over the course of a month, and then use it as the cornerstone of one of my own works. Then, I want that the paper is stable and does not constantly mess with important formal definitions et cetera. Otherwise, people won't be able to agree on the implications the paper has for the community.
* It might be better to make review and reviewers fully visible and move to a more interactive review process. For obvious reasons, practically "double-blind" review does not work, because if you're a visible member of your community and submit a paper, most people can guess that it's yours. If we would move from "one-shot" (or: one-shot plus rebuttal) reviews to more interactive, public, non-anonymous discussions, we would get rid of at least some of the social back-channeling that is only available to the bigshots in the community.
Of course, I don't think we will get there quickly.
* Research papers should be living documents that are properly versioned; updates should get reviewed again. This obviously means that incremental improvements to papers and reviewing need to result in something tangible for one's CV. The versioning makes sure one can still point to a specific revision of a paper. Of course, updates should consider the implications of changes carefully (as is the case for software). For example, I might get familiar with a paper over the course of a month, and then use it as the cornerstone of one of my own works. Then, I want that the paper is stable and does not constantly mess with important formal definitions et cetera. Otherwise, people won't be able to agree on the implications the paper has for the community.
* It might be better to make review and reviewers fully visible and move to a more interactive review process. For obvious reasons, practically "double-blind" review does not work, because if you're a visible member of your community and submit a paper, most people can guess that it's yours. If we would move from "one-shot" (or: one-shot plus rebuttal) reviews to more interactive, public, non-anonymous discussions, we would get rid of at least some of the social back-channeling that is only available to the bigshots in the community.
Of course, I don't think we will get there quickly.