Reviewers are the band. Publishers were just the ticket scalpers.
Track 01 — The rig is rigged
Here is the deal scientific publishing offers you: you do the research, often with public money. You write the paper. Your peers review it — unpaid, on nights and weekends, because rigor matters to them. Then a publisher charges you an article-processing fee that commonly runs from $1,000 to $12,000, sells access back to the very institutions that funded the work, and books operating margins that major publishers have reported in the 30–40% range. The people who created and verified the knowledge get the bill. The intermediary keeps the profit.
That is not a marketplace. That is a toll booth on a road you built.
Track 02 — Reviewers are the band
Peer review is the product. Everything else is distribution, and distribution went free two decades ago. So Review Slave is built around the reviewers: vetted volunteer scientists who review because rigor is the whole game. We don't pay them — and neither does anyone else — but here, the work stops being invisible.
- Every completed review receives a citable identifier and lives permanently on the reviewer's public Crew Card.
- Reviews are signed and public by default (anonymity remains available where candor requires it).
- Review records certify like albums: Bronze, Silver, Gold. Portfolio items, not free labor tossed into a publisher's inbox.
Track 03 — No ransom. Ever.
Submitting is free. Review is free. Publication is free. Reading is free. There is no author tier, no “premium visibility,” no page charges, no paywall. If we cannot afford to run something without charging scientists, we do not run it. This pledge is permanent and non-negotiable.
Track 04 — Rigor is the riff
Attitude is the costume; precision is the instrument. Our editorial standards are aligned with COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) guidance:
- Mandatory conflict-of-interest disclosure from every author and every reviewer, every time.
- Clinical, human-subjects, or animal research is blocked at submission without an ethics/IRB approval statement. Not warned. Blocked.
- Structured reviews with explicit recommendations and severity flags for ethical concerns, escalated to editors.
- A public, versioned record: every revision, every response, every decision letter stays visible after decision. Corrections and retractions happen in the open.
- Published material is research, not medical advice — and every paper page says so.
Track 05 — The Amp: profits flow backwards
Some peer-reviewed work can become products, licenses, or companies. The old system takes a cut at every step. We inverted it: The Amp screens accepted papers for commercial potential, brokers introductions to partners, licensees, and funders — and when revenue is generated, it flows to the researchers. If Review Slave ever earns operating profit from this brokerage, our pledge is that it routes back into the research community: fee-free publishing infrastructure and researcher payouts. Not shareholder margin.
Track 06 — Open everything
Papers publish under open licenses (CC BY 4.0 by default). Review records are open. Our decision criteria are open. The platform's code is open. Sunlight is the cheapest and best disinfectant science has ever had.
Hidden track — join
If you write science: submit your paper. If you can judge it: join the review crew. If you can fund or build on it: plug into The Amp. And hold us to every word on this page — our code of conduct tells you how.
— The Crew