Double-blind peer review is already being tried out, and is a good way to go about it, but is rendered pointless under preprint culture, which, I feel is more important to preserve and promote.

I think the better solution is to have “open” peer review, where the review reports are also published, so that it becomes obvious when a shoddy job has been done, as affected by the Matthew principle.

“So, how can we level the playing field? I think the problem is most pronounced with the absolute top-tier journals”.

They won’t solve this, they prefer big names because they are cited more.