It has long seemed like there was soft collusion in academics anyway. There is plenty of complaining and suspicion about how bad and rigged reviews can sometimes seem to be. There are plenty of rumors of PIs who influence what gets published through back-channel alleys. But even in the absence of outright nefarious activity, there's a reinforcement cycle where bigger labs influence what papers get in, receive more grant money, and get better about influencing what papers get in. Even gently guiding what topics are acceptable, in the long term shuts out newcomers. Just about any graduate student by the time they graduate has reviewed papers in a "double blind" system where they could reliably identify the authors, there are always tell-tale markers and styles. It's really hard to find true anonymity.

I've been thinking on an off about review system that might improve on things. I'm imagining perhaps: reviewers and authors both get to see who they are, and conflicts of interest can be called out by other people after review and before publication; reviewers are chosen at random, not allowed to bid; reviewers are sent a series of pairs of papers, and asked to choose which one they'd rather see, scores and ultimately publication can be decided by rank choice vote rather than reviewer assignment; comments on paper improvement would be completely optional. Would this be better or worse than what we have? Would it deter explicit collusion?