TITLE: A Model Structure on Symmetric Monoidal Categories
QUESTION [6 upvotes]: The recent article found here revisits Thomason's proof that symmetric monoidal categories model all connective spectra, but stops short of showing that there is a full closed model structure on this category (as does, it seems, Thomason's original paper.)  Is there such a thing?
My guess is some lifting similar to how the model structure on small categories is derived would work, but I'm not sure if there are any complications.

REPLY [9 votes]: One basic problem is that the category of symmetric monoidal categories isn't complete.  Its completion, in a basic sense, is the category of multicategories, on which it seems reasonable to conjecture there is a model category structure whose homotopy category "is" the connective part of stable homotopy -- we hope to prove this soon.  See Elmendorf and Mandell, "Permutative categories, multicategories, and algebraic K-theory", which just appeared in Algebraic and Geometric Topology.