How screening works

What a moderator asks

Five questions, and a person can answer all of them in a few minutes.

• Is it research? A piece of work with a question, a method and a conclusion. Not an essay, an advertisement or a press release.
• Is it in scope? Within the subjects this repository lists.
• Is it legal? Not defamatory, not a breach of copyright, not material that would put anybody at risk.
• Is it the authors’ own? An obvious copy of somebody else’s paper is refused. We check what a person can reasonably check.
• Is it readable? A complete manuscript with an abstract, in a file that opens.

What a moderator does not ask

• Whether the method is sound.
• Whether the statistics hold.
• Whether the conclusion follows from the evidence.
• Whether the field will agree.

Nobody here is in a position to judge those on your behalf, which is exactly why every page carries the notice it does.

What happens after

• PassedYou are asked for the fee, and the paper goes public as soon as it is settled.
• ReturnedSomething needs changing. You are told what, in the moderator’s own words, and nothing has been charged. Fix it and send it back.
• Not acceptedWe cannot host it, and you are told why. Nothing has been charged. This is a decision about hosting, not about quality.

Nobody screens their own work

Moderators post research too. A moderator cannot make a decision about a submission they made, and the system refuses it rather than trusting anyone to remember.

If you think we got it wrong

Reply to the decision email. A person reads it, and a different moderator looks again. See complaints.