arXiv imposes rate limit on paper submissions to stem the AI slop tide

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arXiv, the preprint paper repository, is seeing so many low-quality submissions, with AI tools helping drive the surge, that it has imposed a hard limit of two new submissions per month per submitter, regardless of whether they were produced solely by humans or with help from AI tools.

After becoming an independent nonprofit over the summer following 25 years under Cornell University’s stewardship, arXiv continued to rely on a “practical limit” in place that gave moderators the ability to determine whether someone was submitting too many papers. Like everything good and pure in this world, AI has ruined that, too, necessitating some strict new limits.

“arXiv now limits submitters to up to two submissions per calendar month, with a limit of three total active submissions at any given time,” arXiv community engagement manager Kat Boboris wrote in a Thursday announcement of the change, which was effective immediately. According to an arXiv spokesperson, an active paper is one that has been submitted, is under consideration and review, but not yet published on the site.

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It’s worth noting that large institutions whose projects involve multiple researchers are unlikely to see a significant impact on their submissions - this limit is per submitter, the announcement explains, so a research paper with multiple authors only counts toward the submission rate of the individual who files it. Rejected papers count toward that monthly total.

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If that sounds like some strict limitation - it is, but it’s necessary, based on arXiv’s numbers.

In September alone, arXiv said that it had received 40,363 submissions. The same month 10 years ago saw it receive just 9,869 submissions; two years ago that number was 20,569. Submissions have increased 309 percent in the past decade, in other words - and doubled in the past two years alone.

Unsurprisingly, many of the submissions that arXiv has been receiving of late don’t meet its requirements for AI-assisted work, which call for significant use of generative AI tools to be disclosed, for those tools to be used in support of research, and for the resulting work to meet arXiv’s standards for scholarly interest and advancement of the field.

“Many of the submissions that arXiv is now receiving do not satisfy these requirements,” Boboris said, describing many recent submissions as “thin” and “narrow in scope,” and noting an uptick in papers that break a single work up over multiple smaller papers.

“A relatively small proportion of authors are submitting a large number of low-quality papers and consuming a disproportionate fraction of the moderators’ time,” arXiv editorial advisory council chair Thomas Dietterich said. “This is unfair to authors who continue to submit quality papers — their papers can be delayed for days or weeks as a result.”

It’s unfortunate it’s come to this, but the slop sluice is wide open and flooding the channels of academia. arXiv, as a non-profit with volunteer moderators, simply can’t afford to keep combing through the slop pits.

The change may not be permanent, however. arXiv notes in the announcement that the new monthly submission cap is a stopgap measure meant to stem the tide while the organization figures out what new best practices for submissions should look like, while its separate limit of three active submissions has been in place since 2024.

“arXiv will be monitoring the impact of this change on our submissions rates and moderation load to evaluate its overall effectiveness and impact on researchers and will make further changes as needed,” a spokesperson explained.

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In the meantime, arXiv is begging everyone to be purposeful in their submissions.

“arXiv would ask researchers to prioritize their submissions and consider submitting papers that reflect the full scope of their work rather than multiple incremental papers,” the arXiv representative said. ®

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