Nobody likes the current system of peer review, and most everybody agrees it should move online. But from there, opinions diverge. As humanities editors continue to experiment with Web-based technology, two proposed online tools are highlighting disagreement over what needs fixing. Peter H. Sigal, a blue-haired associate professor of history at Duke University, and his two fellow editors of the "Hispanic American Historical Review" have an ambitious design for an online, open peer-review platform for the nearly 100-year-old journal, which they took over in July. The focus, Mr. Sigal says, should be an open, inclusive discussion of ideas and arguments--a "democratic production of knowledge." Traditional peer review is exclusionary and overly concerned with the "yea or nay" of publication. However, Nicolas Espinoza, an assistant professor of philosophy at Stockholm University, disagrees and says that, in fact, the yeas or nays need to come more quickly. To hasten a process that many scholars see as too slow, his experimental digital platform would help editors find speedy reviewers and allow online-community members to weigh in quickly on a manuscript by casting breezy up or down votes, similar to social-media sites such as Reddit. Though their opinions of traditional peer review aren't mutually exclusive, their proposed solutions are, providing yet another sticking point for academics pushing for a scholarly-publishing system that can adapt with technology. Both plans are likely to meet the same resistance and skepticism that other digital-publishing experiments have faced. Humanities scholars may eventually adopt an online peer-review system somewhere in between Mr. Sigal's and Mr. Espinoza's platforms, but for now, a range of models may be the only way to move academic publishing online.