ArXiv endorsement policy tightening limits access for new authors in sparse networks
The Hidden Costs of Gatekeeping in Open Science: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from arXiv's Endorsement Policy Tightening
Social and Information NetworksDigital Libraries
Summary
Some online science platforms ask current members to approve new contributors to keep content quality high. This approval system can make it harder for new scientists to share their work, especially in fields where researchers don't often work closely together. The paper studied a rule change on arXiv that made this approval stricter and found fewer new authors posted in fields with fewer collaborations. However, in fields where scientists collaborate more, new authors were less affected. This suggests that how researchers are connected influences who can easily share science online.
What this means in practice
- •For open science platform managers: Adjust gatekeeping policies to consider community network structures to avoid excluding new contributors in less connected fields.
- •For academic publishers: Design author onboarding processes that account for varying collaboration density to ensure equitable researcher participation.
Authors
Wenchang Wang
Abstract
Preprint servers and open science platforms have become core infrastructure through which scientific knowledge circulates on the Web, greatly facilitating the dissemination and diffusion of online scientific information. Yet to safeguard content quality, many of these platforms rely on existing members to vouch for newcomers; how such network-mediated gatekeeping reshapes entry barriers across different scientific communities remains systematically underexplored. To address this, I examine the potential unequal impacts of this mechanism through arXiv's tightening of its endorsement policy in early 2026. Using the metadata of three million arXiv papers and the co-authorship networks of each research community, I compare the influx and dynamics of first-time submitters before and after the policy across eight disciplines. The findings show that the policy reduced the entry of new authors, and this reduction was concentrated in fields where co-authorship ties are sparse, while fields with dense collaboration networks were largely spared. A comparison with a parallel preprint server in biology suggests that this likely reflects a shift in where researchers choose to post rather than a decline in research activity. These findings demonstrate that the network structure of a scientific community shapes who can enter online scientific production, advancing our understanding of how the Web's open knowledge infrastructure shapes inequality in the diffusion of science.