Monotonicity of review load with journal proliferation

Prove that, in the multi-journal equilibrium described in Section 3.2 with J identical elite journals (each of capacity k/J), Gaussian manuscript quality, author private signals X, reviewer signals Y with fixed threshold acceptance y, and authors allowed to resubmit rejected manuscripts to different journals up to J times per period, the total review load L_J (the expected aggregate number of submissions sent for review per period across all journals, defined as L_J = ∫_0^1 μ_J(q) dq with μ_J(q) the expected number of submissions by type-q authors) increases with J under mild regularity conditions. Establish that L_J is guaranteed to be larger for J+1 journals than for J journals at the model’s steady-state equilibrium satisfying the author-rationality and capacity-filling conditions.

Background

The paper extends the Adda–Ottaviani screening–sorting framework to multiple identical elite journals, allowing authors to resubmit rejected manuscripts to different journals within a period. In this setting, the review load L_J captures the total number of manuscripts sent out for peer review per period. Numerical explorations suggest that adding journals increases resubmissions and selectivity, thereby raising L_J.

The authors report that they could not formally prove that L_J increases with J in general, although no counterexample was found. They explicitly conjecture monotonicity under mild conditions, making this a concrete unresolved problem central to understanding how journal proliferation impacts reviewer burden and the peer-review system’s stability.