> the people that can review your work is roughly 50 or persons whom you met already...
I don't see the problem with this. If the reviews are signed, public, and citable, then it doesn't matter if it is your best friend who reviewed your paper. What he says in the review is public. He engages his name as much as if he was writing a paper, he can't just say "this is good" without being sure that it is and arguing why it is. Just as people would not be able to just say "this is bad" without arguing and pointing out mistakes. I'm pretty sure that such a system would indeed improve the quality of the reviews, and thus the quality of the papers.
If the reviews were signed, public and citable there would be much fewer critical reviews, especially in small fields. Cue all arguments in favour of anonymous participation on the net.
I'm not entirely sure about that. But even if it is the case, so what?
People who know each other could continue to send everything which could have been in a critical review via private email as they do today to help improve the papers.
If what you assume is true, then it would mean that an article with no reviews must be one which would have had critical reviews, so just ignore it. No one can force you into writing a review saying in your name something you don't believe in. If you only want those with positive reviews it's okay, since those reviews still exist in your model.
Nonetheless, a review is not an upvote or a downvote, it's a small summary of the paper, plus comments, plus an overall impression of what are the contributions and their qualities. So I think that signed, public, and citable reviews would actually be better than what we have today, if only because the shitty reviews we sometimes get or write would just disappear.
I don't see the problem with this. If the reviews are signed, public, and citable, then it doesn't matter if it is your best friend who reviewed your paper. What he says in the review is public. He engages his name as much as if he was writing a paper, he can't just say "this is good" without being sure that it is and arguing why it is. Just as people would not be able to just say "this is bad" without arguing and pointing out mistakes. I'm pretty sure that such a system would indeed improve the quality of the reviews, and thus the quality of the papers.