In light of record submission rates and a large volume of AI-generated slop papers, SocArXiv recently implemented a policy requiring ORCID accounts linked in the OSF profile of submitting authors, and narrowing our focus to social science subjects (see this announcement). Today we are taking two more steps:
1. We are pausing new submissions about AI topics for 90 days. That is, papers about AI models, testing AI models, proposing AI models, theories about the future of AI and so on. We will make exceptions for papers that are already accepted for publication (or already published) in peer-reviewed scholarly journals. And we will make exceptions for empirical social science research about AI in society – for example, a study on how AI use affects workers in an organization – on a case-by-case basis. The purpose of this pause is to make it faster and easier for moderators to reject these papers, and encourage these authors to find other ways of distributing their work.
If your empirical social science research paper on an AI topic is rejected and you would like to appeal, please email us a link to the paper at socarxiv@gmail.com with a short note of explanation. We apologize for requiring this step.
2. We are developing a policy for AI-related work. We need a better, formal policy on AI-generated and LLM-assisted content. We have formed a committee of volunteers from our social science and library science networks to gather existing policies from other services and publications, and decide what policy is right for us. This includes the values we want to support, the work we are able to do, and the technical needs and requirements we have in doing our moderation and hosting. We hope this policy will be ready to implement when the 90-day pause on AI-related papers ends.
If you have expertise or suggestions for us in this work, we would appreciate hearing from you.
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