Institute for Complexity Science
& Advanced Computing
Open peer review for independent researchers. Free to submit. No APCs. Ever. Accepted work runs in our annual print & ebook journal, Persistence.
Academic publishing is broken, and the gatekeepers know it. Paywalls in front, four-figure APCs in back, opaque desk-rejects in the middle, plagiarism detectors that flag a researcher’s own prior work as misconduct. ICSAC is the answer we built after the system told us no for the wrong reason.
Why this exists
A peer-reviewed paper from this lab was desk-rejected by a large commercial publisher’s flagship journal on a 94% plagiarism flag — entirely from self-overlap with the author’s own prior open-access papers on the same research program. Iterative thinking, properly cited, dressed up as misconduct by a content-matching tool and rubber-stamped by an editor who didn’t read past the score.
That is not peer review. That is liability-management automation wearing the costume of peer review.
So we built the alternative in the open. A 5-reviewer AI panel, a Review-Quality-Control audit that scores the panel itself, and a human curator with their name attached who confirms, modifies, or overrides every recommendation. The redacted review record is published alongside the accepted paper. Receipts, in public.
Prompts, rubrics, scoring code, citation verification, redaction layer, RQC audit — all published here, MIT-licensed. Fork it. Audit it. Run it yourself. If we get something wrong, you can see exactly where.
The journal — Persistence
- Free to submit. Free to read. No APCs — ever. No fast-track for friends, no slow-walk for outsiders.
- Annual paperback + ebook. Accepted papers run in the print volume of Persistence, with a permanent free online record of the full review trail. First issue May 2027.
- Authors retain copyright. DOI on accept via Zenodo. ORCID-gated submission, 5–10 day turnaround.
On Hugging Face
The open-source AI editorial pipeline that receives, reviews, and adjudicates every submission to ICSAC and to Persistence. Submission handler, rubrics, prompts, citation checks, redaction layer, and the audit pass that scores the panel itself.
One defensive exception: the prompt-injection signal in the RQC audit is withheld, to avoid teaching adversarial submissions what to evade. Everything else is in the open.
Affiliate with the Institute
For independent researchers, postdocs between posts, retired scientists who never stopped working, and anyone whose work is real but whose letterhead is not. Annual affiliation includes:
- A verifiable ICSAC ID in the form
ICSAC-NNNNN, listed in our public directory. - A printable digital credential (PDF) with a QR code that resolves to your public verification page at
icsacinstitute.org/verify/<id>. - The right to list “Affiliate Researcher, ICSAC” on future works — papers, preprints, talks, conference proceedings — where appropriate and consistent with the venue’s affiliation guidelines.
- Persistence digest newsletter, discount on the annual print, eligibility for merit-based promotion to Research Fellow.
Affiliation does not include review or curation rights — those are earned through demonstrated participation, not purchased.
Where the rest lives
- SITEicsacinstitute.org
- JRNLPersistence — annual print + ebook, no APCs
- PUBAccepted papers with full review records
- SUBSubmit a manuscriptFree · ORCID-gated · DOI, arXiv ID, or PDF · 5–10 day turnaround
- AFFAffiliate Researcher — annual, verifiable ID + QR-credentialed
- IDVerify a member ID
- DOIZenodo community
- SRCgithub.com/ICSAC
Support the work
ICSAC runs on direct contributions from people who think rigorous, accessible peer review is worth keeping alive outside the gatekept circuit. No grants, no university overhead, no APCs — so the math has to come from somewhere.
One-time donation, annual Supporter (name on /supporters), or annual Sponsor (logo + link). All run through Stripe at icsacinstitute.org/community/donate. ICSAC is not a registered 501(c)(3); contributions are not tax-deductible.
info@icsacinstitute.org · Independent and donor-funded