How many new ideas never see the light of day or receive the attention they deserve because of our current scientific publishing landscape? Can we create new organizational structures that promote greater creativity and diversity of thought in science? Can people outside of academia make valuable contributions if given the proper platform and support?

Seeds of Science is an experimental publishing platform that aims to provide some preliminary answers to these questions. We overcome many of the issues that plague scientific publishing by subverting some of the more restrictive norms and conventions used in traditional journals — speculation and early-stage ideas are not only allowed but encouraged, peer review is fast and decentralized (no opaque gatekeeping by a small group of editors or months-long waits for decisions), authors are free to write in whatever style or format best suits their ideas (as long as the ideas are original, scientifically useful, and clearly expressed), and we pay authors (or send their payment to a charity of their choosing) instead of charging them exorbitant publication fees.

Our primary criterion can be distilled into one question - does the article contain original ideas or analysis that have the potential to advance science? Peer review is conducted through community-based voting and commenting by our diverse network of "gardeners" (free to join, open to all with demonstrated scientific interest/expertise). Another unique feature of SoS worth noting is that comments from gardeners which usefully critique or extend the ideas in the article are published along with the main text. 

In the short term, our goal is to grow our gardener community and continue publishing innovative articles that might not find a home in more traditional journals. Over the long term, our pie-in-the-sky dream is to leverage the journal and gardener community to build a new kind of scientific organization, something like a rogue university/scientific society coordinates research activities of a more exploratory and unconventional nature while also providing support to independent researchers.