Free science (and not): trying open peer review in the country of state evaluation of research

Informal peer review is - or used to be - embedded in scientific debate. However, for political reasons, formal and closed peer review became the standard for the administrative evaluation of research during the Cold War years. This formal peer review, based on a kind of procedural ipse dixit, destroyed the open-ended nature of scientific debate, turning its results into a ritualised collection of tokens for the sake of careers rather than science. Can peer review truly be open (or free) if it is subject to administrative evaluation and must adhere to the procedures defined by the evaluation agency? If not, we should turn the COARA principles on their head: before trying to change how research is assessed, we should ask who is entitled to evaluate it and question the centralised evaluation agencies that need strict procedures as a weapon of mass evaluation.