Economics paper submissions nearly double post-ChatGPT, referee shortage suggests submission fees must rise to $410
JMateosGarcia · x · 2026-08-17
Since the release of ChatGPT, the number of new economics papers submitted annually has nearly doubled, yet the number of people qualified to review them remains unchanged. Journals currently ration this scarce attention by making authors wait, with the average time to acceptance exceeding two years.
The author argues that submission fees should be used to ration access at the door and pay referees. Currently, one in five economics journals charges a fee, with a median of about $140. Rough estimates suggest top journals would need to charge nearer $410 to clear the queue, a figure expected to rise within five years as models improve.
The same shortage affects research teams. By scoring 3,600 paper abstracts across 30 fields based on work a machine cannot do, the model predicts that in the most codifiable fields (like algebra and number theory), team sizes will stop growing around 2027.
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