Editorial policy

1. States

1. submitted: author opted into the journal lane on a completed peer-review ticket.
2. eligible: rubric score and hard floors pass; paper can open a public candidate window.
3. candidate: public endorsement and challenge window is open (10 days by default).
4. published: Pith Journal endorsed the paper. A permanent article page is created.
5. declined: publication was declined; the decision letter is published with the rubric.
6. ineligible: hard floor failed or rubric score below threshold. Authors see exactly which gates failed.
7. withdrawn: author withdrew; the rubric and objection record are kept for the audit log.

2. Hard floors

Any one of these blocks eligibility, regardless of score:

• reject_recommendation: Final referee recommendation is 'reject'.
• out_of_scope: Final referee recommendation is 'out_of_scope'.
• uncertain_recommendation: Final referee recommendation is 'uncertain'.
• load_bearing_overclaim: At least one load-bearing claim is overclaimed.
• load_bearing_unsupported: At least one load-bearing claim is unsupported.
• unresolved_major_revisions: Major revisions are open. Submit a revised manuscript as a fresh peer-review ticket before journal consideration.
• unresolved_formalization: Formalization required. Provide the missing Lean artifacts in a fresh peer-review ticket.
• unresolved_empirical_artifact: Empirical evidence required. Upload data or code in a fresh peer-review ticket.
• minor_revision_pending_check: Minor revisions are open. Submit the revised manuscript as a fresh peer-review ticket, then submit to journal from the passing review.
• missing_empirical_artifact: Paper claims empirical evidence but supplies no data or code.
• synthesis_missing: Peer review did not produce a synthesis payload.
• ticket_not_done: Peer review ticket is not in a 'done' state.

Hard floors are deterministic. They are computed from the peer-review synthesis, claim ledger, and verification grade. There is no human override.

3. Rubric

Each axis is scored in [0, 1] and combined by the disclosed weight vector. The composite score is also in [0, 1].

Eligibility threshold: composite score ≥ 0.55. Scores open the journal lane; they never publish a paper by themselves. Publication requires explicit action.

4. Journal fee

There is no fee to publish in Pith Journal. The only cost in the pipeline is the Pith Review fee, which pays for the machine review that produces the rubric score and reference audit. Once a paper passes review and clears the candidate window, journal publication is free.

5. Endorsements

During the candidate window, signed-in users can add a typed endorsement:

• technical_correctness: the central arguments check out.
• novelty: this is genuinely new work.
• reproducibility: code, data, or formal proof artifacts are real and usable.
• formal_artifact: a Lean module or other machine-checked artifact backs a load-bearing claim.
• field_significance: the result matters for a field the endorser actually works in.
• expository_value: the paper unifies or clarifies a body of prior work.

An author cannot endorse their own submission. Endorsements never override an objection or a hard floor.

6. Objections

Objections during the candidate window must cite at least one claim ID or section reference with at least 20 characters of explanation. Three severities:

• minor: clarification, typo, or small scope concern.
• major: substantive concern about a load-bearing argument.
• blocking: an unresolved objection blocks publication when the window closes.

Authors can respond and mark an objection as resolved. The final decision letter cites every unresolved blocking objection.

7. AI instructions

The rubric is the AI instructions. There is no hidden model prompt. Every score is a deterministic function of:

1. the structured fields in the existing peer-review synthesis JSON;
2. the claim ledger and verification grade in that same JSON;
3. the public endorsement and objection record once the candidate window has run.

The peer-review pipeline: Grok 4.3 referee + Claude Opus 4.7 referee + Grok 4.3 synthesizer, against the public Recognition Science library.

8. Anti-club commitments

• No acceptance based purely on endorsement volume.
• No private editorial veto. The composite rubric, the public endorsement record, and the public objection record together produce the decision.
• Endorsements are weighted by verified identity, never by institutional prestige.
• Authors are anonymous in the candidate window for uploaded manuscripts until they opt into identity disclosure, unless the work is already public on arXiv.
• Every published paper has a public decision ledger reproducible from the rubric version recorded on the page.
• Appeals must target a concrete failed gate or a factual error in the review. Appeals are public.

9. Standing audit

The audit dashboard publishes acceptance rates, score distributions, and objection outcomes. It updates in real time and is the same data feed that drives this rubric.