Paying for Publication with Peer Review Design and Simulation of a Fee-Free, Credit-Based Open Access Journal for Information Technology

2026-09-27

AI Summary

This study addresses the financial burden on authors in open-access publishing and the uncompensated, unevenly distributed nature of peer review by proposing Quorum, a novel journal system. Quorum introduces a pioneering credit-based, zero-fee model that replaces traditional article processing charges with submission credits earned through reviewing contributions. To ensure effective cold-start operation, the system incorporates a genesis block bootstrapping mechanism alongside a seven-day automatic escalation strategy. Furthermore, rule-based decision-making is achieved by integrating an automated expert-matching algorithm with a blockchain-style credit ledger. Agent-based simulation experiments demonstrate that this mechanism successfully sustains community operations, achieving a median review turnaround of only seven days while effectively maintaining manuscript processing rates within small-scale academic communities.

Abstract

Open access publishing has moved much of the cost of scholarly communication from readers to authors, while the labor of peer review remains unpaid and unevenly shared. This paper describes the design of Quorum: An Open Journal of Information Technology (jquorum.org), a journal that charges neither readers nor authors and uses peer review as its currency instead. Every first complete review a scholar writes on a manuscript earns one credit, and one credit pays for one submission. Each manuscript receives three double-blind reviews from reviewers matched automatically by expertise, and editorial decisions follow published rules rather than editor discretion. The paper documents the credit ledger, a bootstrapping mechanism called the genesis block, a reviewer search that widens after seven days and opens the paper to volunteers, the decision rules, and the integrity safeguards. An agent-based simulation, run for two simulated years with 40 replications per scenario, evaluates these choices. Without the genesis block, no paper was submitted in any replication. With it, a community growing from 40 to about 330 members submitted about 603 papers, and papers waited a median of 7 days for a full review panel. The day-7 escalation had a modest effect in a large community but a decisive one in a small community of about 60 members, where removing it left 48.8% of papers without a panel after 60 days, compared with 4.6% with it. Unspent credits also accumulated to about 3.7 per member after two years, which points to a policy choice the journal will face as it grows.

Problem

• open access publishing
• peer review
• credit-based journal
• scholarly communication

Innovation

• credit-based open access
• peer review currency
• genesis block bootstrapping
• agent-based simulation
• dynamic reviewer matching