Tightening the endorsement rules on arXiv caused a 50% drop in new researchers entering fields like economics and quantitative biology.
The platform meant to democratize science unintentionally created a rigid social caste system that excludes outsiders. New authors now struggle to get their work seen because they lack the necessary social connections to get an endorsement. People generally view open-access repositories as a way to bypass the elitism of traditional journals. This study proves that even open platforms can reinforce old-boy networks by placing administrative hurdles in front of newcomers. Scientific progress suffers when the barrier to entry is a person's network rather than the quality of their work.
The Hidden Costs of Gatekeeping in Open Science: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from arXiv's Endorsement Policy Tightening
SocArXiv · v8z4j_v1
Open science platforms promise to democratize scholarly communication, yet many impose social network-dependent barriers to entry. We study the causal effect of arXiv's January 2026 endorsement policy tightening---which required new submitters to secure endorsement from established authors rather than relying on institutional affiliation alone---on new author entry rates. Constructing a panel of 143 subcategories observed weekly over 94 weeks from 3 million papers, we estimate Poisson quasi-maxi