saved
Fair Moderation, Equitable Access, and AI: arXiv’s Updated Rate Limit Policy
Hraness wrote this summary from a saved copy of the source. Quotations are taken word for word from the source.
gist
Kat Boboris announces that as of 1 October 2026 arXiv caps every submitter at two submissions per calendar month and three active submissions at once. September 2026 hit a record 40,363 submissions—double 2024—with nearly 9,000 support tickets, and cs.AI volume up over 6× in two years. Moderators see thin, salami-sliced, and dense AI-written papers that fail scholarly standards while consuming volunteer time and delaying careful authors. The stopgap aims to share moderator effort fairly while arXiv improves tools and revisits best practice for AI-assisted authorship; rejected submissions still count, and co-author rates are unaffected.
ideas
- AI erased the old practical submission ceiling. Before generative tools, moderator discretion could catch outliers; now the feasible rate of independent papers is contested.
- Volume has doubled in two years. September submissions rose from about 10k (2016) to 21k (2024) to 40k (2026), with cs.AI growing over 6× while other categories roughly doubled.
- Low-value AI papers monopolize moderators. Thin, narrow, salami, and dense AI-written papers from a small author share delay quality work for days or weeks.
- Hard caps replace discretion as stopgap. Two submissions per calendar month plus three active at once apply across all categories while tools and norms catch up.
- FAQ details bite on behavior. Rejected papers count; on-hold carryovers spare the next month’s quota but still fill the active three; deleting before announcement clears the count; only the submitter’s rate is charged.
quotes
“In only the past two years, submissions have doubled.”
“consuming a disproportionate fraction of the moderators’ time”
“arXiv now limits submitters to up to two submissions per calendar month”
“this rate limit is for submissions, not announced papers”