Opinion: A market for "paper equity" could solve incentives and ethics in academia

soumitrashukla9 · x · 2026-08-17

The post discusses the idea that the lack of feedback on papers stems from a missing market for "paper equity." It suggests allowing the sale of small fractions of a paper's equity (authorship) in exchange for meaningful assistance, with equity owners receiving a share of future citations. The author argues this could solve many ethics issues, particularly where senior authors preserve ambiguity to get junior researchers to work. Clear discussion of credit upfront would incentivize everyone to invest properly.

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