Can We Volunteer Out of the Peer Review Crisis?
For the scientific community, it proposes a solution to the peer review crisis, though it remains a theoretical thought experiment without empirical validation.
The paper uses a game-theoretic model to show that a voluntary lottery for pre-review rejection can reduce reviewer burden and improve evaluation quality, with a Nash equilibrium where authors opt in.
The volume of scientific manuscripts is growing faster than the capacity to evaluate them, yet the institutions that govern peer review have remained largely unchanged. The result is a widening mismatch: reviewer scarcity, noisier assessments, and declining confidence in editorial decisions. Every scientist wants better reviews, but review quality depends on the total burden, which no single author can shift. To isolate this tension, we provide a game-theoretic thought experiment: a voluntary lottery in which authors accept a chance of random pre-review rejection, reducing reviewer burden and improving the quality of surviving evaluations. We show that a Nash equilibrium emerges in which authors voluntarily enter the lottery. Scientists who care about the literature they read, not just the papers they publish, will opt in, raising the quality of published science for all.