NEWS15 October 2026Major preprint platform tightens its rules to curb a surge of submissions, including those generated by artificial-intelligence tools.ByDalmeet Singh Chawla0Dalmeet Singh ChawlaDalmeet Singh Chawla is a freelance science journalist based in London.View author publicationsSearch author on: PubMed Google ScholarView saved researchSome preprint servers report being flooded with submissions.Credit: Michael Szebor/NatureIn a bid to tackle the deluge of manuscripts it now receives, the preprint server arXiv has announced a cap of two papers per month for each submitting researcher, which began on 1 October.The move follows a steep rise in submissions driven mainly by the slop generated by artificial-intelligence tools, says Steinn Sigurðsson, an astrophysicist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park and scientific director of arXiv. In September, 40,000 preprints were uploaded to arXiv, up from about 30,000 between March and July.Closing the floodgatesThe cap is the latest measure introduced by arXiv to prevent its nearly 300 voluntary moderators from being completely overwhelmed by submissions, says Sigurðsson. They are now collectively checking about 1,000 manuscripts per day. This step is “holding up too many legitimate papers,” Sigurðsson says, noting that nearly 4,000 submissions are currently waiting to be posted on the site.Some see the limit as entirely reasonable. Siddhesh Zādéy, an epidemiologist at Columbia University in New York City, says that it is not “stunting anyone's productivity”, because posting two preprint articles per month already requires substantial work.Surge in fake citations uncovered by audit of 2.5 million biomedical-science papersOthers think that arXiv’s new policy should be stricter. Victor Galitski, a theoretical physicist at the University of Maryland in College Park, says that the limit can be circumvented through co-authors taking turns to submit studies.Another preprint server, the social-sciences repository SocArXiv, now also restricts submissions to one article per author per week. “Sometimes there are good reasons to upload three papers at once, such as dissertation chapters,” notes Philip Cohen, a sociologist and demographer at the University of Maryland, who is director of SocArXiv. But most of the time, several submissions in rapid succession are “a good tip-off for AI slop”, he says.Other venues are dealing with a rapid surge in submissions, and some major AI conferences and journals have turned to similar submission quotas.Clean up the literatureSome say that the issue of AI slop can’t be solved by rejecting more articles. “If arXiv turns those papers away, they’ll simply go somewhere else and become someone else’s problem,” says Natalie Khalil, the founder of Reviewer3, a platform run from San Francisco, California, which uses AI to help researchers conduct peer review.doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-03194-wRelated Articles Whoops! Most arXiv papers contain information never meant to be public Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature. What can be done? Is AI leading to a reproducibility crisis in science? Take Nature’s AI research test: find out how your ethics compareSubjectsPublishingScientific communityEthicsMachine learningLatest on:PublishingScientific communityEthicsJobs T/TT Faculty Position - Materials Science & EngineeringThe Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE), College of Engineering, University of Michigan, seeks outstanding applicants for a tenur...Ann Arbor, MichiganUniversity of Michigan - MSEOpen Rank Faculty (All Levels) in Dept of Oncology ScienceOpen Rank Faculty (All Levels) in Dept of Oncology Science The newly established Department of Oncology Science, College of Medicine, at the Univ...Oklahoma City, OklahomaUniversity of Oklahoma Health CampusCall for Researchers and ExpertsF-REI seeks Researchers, Senior Researchers, Experts, and Senior Experts to advance innovative R&D, foster innovation, and support Fukushima's future.Japan (JP)Fukushima Institute for Research, Education and Innovation (F-REI)Associate or Senior Editor – Scientific ReportsAssociate or Senior Editor – Scientific Reports Organisation: Nature Portfolio Location: London, UK Application Deadline: 29th October 2026 About...London (Greater) (GB)Springer Nature LtdOpen Rank Faculty Position in Science - School of Science and EngineeringThe School of Science and Engineering (SSE) at theCUHK-Shenzhen sincerely invites applications for Tenure/Teaching/Research Stream faculty positionsShenzhen, ChinaThe Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen - School of Science and Engineering