In order to not drown in slop submissions you could require each author to stake as much money as the reviewers would be happy to be paid to reject their submission as slop.
I like this idea aesthetically. I foresee some challenges in making “staking” something that won’t trigger alarms in the existing research bureaucracies that host many of our potential authors. If you have clever ideas for how to handle that I would be curious to hear.
I guess during signup you could require authors to say what existing research bureaucracy they are working for, and only if they click the I am an independent researcher. link are they introduced to staking.
An example, for what it’s worth: Quantum journal is relatively new physics arXiv-overlay journal (10 years old) that runs on volunteers effort and modest publication fees (~$700). They didn’t want the fees to be a barrier to submitting, so they have a very easy process for getting the fees waived; you basically just have to ask. My understanding is that they still have not been overrun with slop, and whenever I am asked to review the papers are reasonable quality. So it does not seem they are foisting the slop handling onto reviewers. Desk-rejection by the editors appears to be enough.
I’m not speaking on behalf of the initiative here, but I do see some promise in author submission fees being used to cover referee compensation. If done judiciously.
I’m interested to hear more. Would it mostly be for practical reasons (financial sustainability), or to reduce the submission of bad work that wastes editor/reviewer time?
In order to not drown in slop submissions you could require each author to stake as much money as the reviewers would be happy to be paid to reject their submission as slop.
I like this idea aesthetically. I foresee some challenges in making “staking” something that won’t trigger alarms in the existing research bureaucracies that host many of our potential authors. If you have clever ideas for how to handle that I would be curious to hear.
I guess during signup you could require authors to say what existing research bureaucracy they are working for, and only if they click the
I am an independent researcher.link are they introduced to staking.An example, for what it’s worth: Quantum journal is relatively new physics arXiv-overlay journal (10 years old) that runs on volunteers effort and modest publication fees (~$700). They didn’t want the fees to be a barrier to submitting, so they have a very easy process for getting the fees waived; you basically just have to ask. My understanding is that they still have not been overrun with slop, and whenever I am asked to review the papers are reasonable quality. So it does not seem they are foisting the slop handling onto reviewers. Desk-rejection by the editors appears to be enough.
I’m not speaking on behalf of the initiative here, but I do see some promise in author submission fees being used to cover referee compensation. If done judiciously.
I’m interested to hear more. Would it mostly be for practical reasons (financial sustainability), or to reduce the submission of bad work that wastes editor/reviewer time?