ACL Caps Authors to Save Reviewing, as Kyunghyun Cho Proposes ScholarCoin Token Economy
kchonyc · x · 2026-09-11
Two related moves address the same crisis: paper output is exploding while peer review remains unpaid.
ACL's policy change: ACL announced reforms to submissions and reviewing that cap the number of authors per paper and adjust reviewing duties, aimed at keeping the community sustainable — a concrete institutional response from a top NLP venue.
The ScholarCoin proposal (design doc by NYU's Kyunghyun Cho): a decentralized academic incentive model:
- Proof-of-Review: submitting a paper costs ScholarCoins; completing a review earns them — consuming resources obligates verification work
- Resubmission friction: submission cost rises monotonically with resubmission count (C(s)=1+αk), discouraging spam resubmissions
- Closed economy: coins earned from reviews can be exchanged for submissions, chairing, or committee roles, backed by mathematical modeling for a balanced, non-inflationary economy
A mechanism-design alternative to fixing peer review incentives, worth reading alongside ACL's official reform.
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