A useful thing might be to provide "good" GEDCOMs that are associated with good (documented) genealogical articles (and books). The GEDCOM would just cover the people in the article, and would have source entries for them. The sources could either just refer to the article, or perhaps to the sources used in the article but qualified, probably, by reference to the article. For instance, "U.S. Census, ... page 123, according to John Doe, The Doe and Dough Families (1999)".
Who prepares these? Ideally, the author of the article. This makes sense when the article is being published at the same time. It could also be done by the author later. It could be done by anyone willing to do it, but then the question arises as to how acurate it is with respect to the article.