The Price of Peer Review? My Thoughts on IJCAI 2026’s Submission Fee

I recently read the news that IJCAI-ECAI 2026 is launching the “Primary Paper Initiative.” They are introducing a \$100 submission fee. This fee is waived only for “primary papers”, meaning papers where none of the authors appear on any other submission.

Basically, if you are an author on more than one paper, you pay.

I want to preface this by saying I am not a “star” researcher. I am just a regular member of the community who loves this field. I am not against any initiative that genuinely advances our community or solves the very real problem of reviewer burnout. However, as I digest this news, I can’t help but feel a mix of skepticism and concern.

What strikes me first is the flat rate itself. In the US, \$100 might be a line item in a large grant. But in countries like India, or for labs in developing nations, \$100 is a significant amount of money. I come from a background where funding was tight, and I remember my time in the lab where literally every dollar counted. We had to make hard choices about equipment and travel. Adding a price tag to the submission process, the very act of trying to share knowledge, feels like it ignores the socioeconomic reality of a global scientific community. We should not be enlarging these differences; we should be bridging them.

Beyond the financial aspect, my biggest worry is that we aren’t asking why we have so much submission volume in the first place. We seem to be trying to tax the problem away rather than solving the deeper issues. The explosion in paper counts is often a symptom of systemic pressures, specifically the administrative practice of “bean counting” that drives the “publish or perish” culture. We are often judged by the sheer count of papers at top venues. By charging a fee, we aren’t fixing these structural incentives.

There is also the issue of access to mentorship. As a graduate student (and even now), I viewed the peer review process as a critical learning tool. Every piece of feedback I received helped strengthen my work, and I was always grateful for it. By charging for submissions that don’t fit the “primary” criteria, we are effectively telling students and researchers that if they can’t pay, they don’t deserve that feedback. A review shouldn’t be a luxury product; it is the lifeblood of academic growth.

Finally, I find the “reviewer workload” justification slightly ironic. Isn’t everyone who submits already obligated to review? If the community is doing its part, why is the burden still so high? Furthermore, we are the AI community! Are we really saying we aren’t advanced enough to utilize our own technology to assist with the first round of review or triage? It seems strange to charge human fees to solve a problem that our own research is trying to solve.

I want IJCAI to succeed, and I want our reviewers to be happy. But I fear this initiative solves a logistical problem by creating an inclusion problem. Research should be judged on merit and the quality of ideas, not on the ability to pay an entrance fee.