{"schema_version":1,"assessment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_opportunity320_20260801","source_experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"deadweight_loss_reduction__philosophy","archetype_slug":"deadweight_loss_reduction","domain_slug":"philosophy","title":"Bounded Merit-Screened Journal Format Waiver","opportunity_summary":"Test whether a capped, blinded waiver pathway for marginally over-length or nonstandard philosophy manuscripts recovers merits-reviewable contributions without exceeding preset workload, delay, rigor, integrity, or equity limits. The problem, prevalence, effect size, and distinctiveness remain hypotheses.","adopter_authorizer":"A participating philosophy journal's editor or editorial board, subject to publisher policy and reviewer consent.","scores":{"meaningful_impact":{"score":3,"rationale":"Recovering philosophical contributions and reducing low-value reformatting could matter, but the packet supplies no evidence about how often format rules independently exclude meritorious work or how consequential the losses are."},"stakeholder_pull":{"score":2,"rationale":"The candidate identifies affected authors, editors, reviewers, and readers but provides no expressed demand, adopter commitment, complaint data, or evidence that journals view rigid eligibility as a priority problem."},"incremental_advantage":{"score":3,"rationale":"The waiver directly changes categorical eligibility while retaining ordinary review standards, an advantage over triage or reviewer-matching improvements if format exclusion is binding; the packet explicitly leaves that diagnosis unverified."},"distinctiveness_plausibility":{"score":2,"rationale":"The bounded, blinded, expiring design is coherent, but prior-art status is UNSEARCHED and the packet provides no comparison with existing exception policies, length waivers, or experimental editorial tracks."},"technical_implementability":{"score":4,"rationale":"A maximum-20-case pathway using eligibility rules, blinded screening, consent, ordinary peer review, monitoring, and expiry appears operationally straightforward, though suitable blinding procedures and workload measures still need specification."},"adoption_authority_feasibility":{"score":4,"rationale":"The editor or editorial board is explicitly identified, publisher policy is acknowledged, reviewer refusal remains protected, and rollback is defined; feasibility falls short of very favorable because no participating journal or publisher authorization is evidenced."},"evidence_readiness":{"score":4,"rationale":"The candidate specifies observable pathway states, separate problem and intervention falsifiers, comparison with ordinary cases, workload and delay measures, and stopping thresholds. Baseline data availability and a validated contribution-screen measure are not established."},"safety_net_benefit":{"score":4,"rationale":"The proposal may give otherwise excluded arguments a bounded route to merits review while preserving acceptance rigor, and it contains caps, consent, exclusions, stopping rules, expiry, and rollback. Favoritism, gaming, displacement, and unequal access remain material risks."},"scalability":{"score":3,"rationale":"The policy mechanism could be reproduced across journals with modest infrastructure, but philosophical screening standards, editorial capacity, publisher rules, reviewer pools, and local equity effects may limit transferability."}},"score_confidence":"MODERATE","costs":{"first_evidence":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"A retrospective or shadow evaluation of a bounded sample of format-ineligible manuscripts, using blinded contribution-and-feasibility screens and comparison with matched ordinary submissions on screen outcomes and estimated editorial burden.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["A participating journal can supply de-identified submission and workflow data.","The study uses existing editors or paid expert screeners rather than building new software.","The sample is large enough to test the problem falsifier but does not involve live waiver admission.","Legal, privacy, and data-preparation work is limited."]},"initial_deployment_startup":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"Design, governance approval, preregistration, public eligibility criteria, blinding workflow, consent materials, monitoring definitions, equity safeguards, and staff training for one journal's capped pilot.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Publisher approval does not require extensive contractual or platform changes.","Existing manuscript systems can support the track with manual configuration.","External legal or ethics review is limited.","The reviewer-hour ceiling and issue-capacity rules are defined before launch."]},"operational_launch":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"Operate and evaluate the specified six-month, maximum-20-case pilot, including screening, editorial coordination, incremental reviewer labor, delay monitoring, integrity review, analysis, and rollback administration.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["No more than 20 cases enter the waiver pathway.","Reviewers participate voluntarily and incremental expert labor is resource-costed.","Ordinary peer-review infrastructure remains usable.","No serious integrity incident or extensive remediation occurs."]},"annual_recurring":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"Maintain a single-journal capped waiver track for one year, including screening, incremental editorial and reviewer effort, monitoring, periodic equity and integrity audits, policy communication, and evaluation.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Volume remains near the pilot's bounded scale rather than becoming an unrestricted submission channel.","The journal does not require dedicated full-time staff or major software development.","Reviewer burden stays within an authorized ceiling.","This band excludes expansion across multiple journals or publishers."]}},"research_burden":"MODERATE","earliest_credible_horizon":"3_TO_12_MONTHS","pipeline_gates":{"recognizable_externally_supportable_problem":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The packet gives a recognizable, observable hypothesis about desk rejection, reformatting, and lost contributions, but supplies no external evidence that the pathway is prevalent, independent of substantive quality, or consequential at any journal."},"identifiable_adopter_or_authorizer":{"status":"YES","reason":"The journal editor or editorial board is explicitly identified as decision authority, subject to publisher policy, while reviewers retain authority over assignments."},"distinct_testable_incremental_claim":{"status":"YES","reason":"The proposal claims that a blinded waiver screen can increase favorable merits-reviewed contributions per added editorial hour relative to uniform format enforcement, with delay, workload, quality, and equity bounds."},"bounded_next_evidence_step":{"status":"YES","reason":"The sealed candidate authorizes a six-month, maximum-20-case design and supplies comparison outcomes, falsifiers, monitoring, expiry, and rollback; an even safer shadow version can test the problem before live admissions."},"no_unresolved_safety_or_authority_stop":{"status":"YES","reason":"The proposal preserves ordinary acceptance standards and reviewer consent, excludes private or paid access and weakened integrity checks, and defines stop and rollback conditions; publisher approval remains a prerequisite rather than an assumed authorization."},"implementation_cost_scope_and_range":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The six-month and 20-case limits bound scale, but the packet does not specify sample preparation, screening labor, reviewer-hour ceiling, system changes, compliance effort, or partner terms sufficiently to validate a resource range externally."}},"blocking_evidence":["No evidence establishes the frequency or consequentiality of merit-independent format exclusion at a prospective participating journal.","The blinded contribution-and-feasibility screen has not been shown to distinguish promising excluded manuscripts or predict favorable ordinary review.","No participating editor, board, or publisher has confirmed demand, authority, data access, staffing, or reviewer capacity.","Prior art is unsearched, so the design's distinctiveness relative to existing journal waiver and experimental-track practices is unknown.","Incremental labor, delay, displacement, gaming, integrity, and distributional effects have not been measured."],"next_evidence_step":"Run a preregistered, non-deployment shadow study at one willing journal: apply a blinded contribution-and-review-feasibility screen to a bounded retrospective sample of format-ineligible manuscripts and matched format-eligible submissions, then compare screen-pass rates and estimated editorial hours. Do not alter publication decisions. Falsify the problem hypothesis if nearly all ineligible manuscripts fail the same screen or if reformatting loss is negligible; proceed to authorization inquiry only if a nontrivial subset passes without projected workload or equity bounds being breached.","research_questions":["How many manuscripts are rejected solely or materially because of word-limit or format eligibility rules?","Among format-ineligible submissions, what share passes a blinded contribution-and-review-feasibility screen relative to matched ordinary submissions?","Does the screen predict favorable ordinary merits evaluations rather than merely editorial enthusiasm or author status?","What incremental editor and reviewer hours, decision delays, and ordinary-submission displacement would the waiver create?","Can blinding and public eligibility criteria prevent insider advantage, prestige effects, and unequal access to exceptions?","Does a waiver induce strategic noncompliance or materially reduce readability, rigor, citation integrity, or anonymity?","Are streamlined triage or improved reviewer matching superior because delay or reviewer discovery is the actual binding constraint?","What existing journal exception policies or experimental tracks constitute relevant prior art?","Which publisher, board, reviewer-consent, data-governance, and issue-capacity approvals are required?","What workload ceiling and equity thresholds should govern pilot admission, stopping, and continuation? "],"recommendation":"VALIDATE_PROBLEM_FIRST","uncertainty_constraints":["Closed-book assessment: no external claims about prevalence, prior art, demand, market size, realized impact, or exact cost are made.","Problem prevalence and magnitude are explicitly hypothetical.","The meaning and reliability of a blinded philosophical-contribution screen are unresolved.","Cost bands are resource-equivalent planning ranges based only on the stated cap and workflow, not vendor quotes or observed journal data.","Distinctiveness cannot be scored favorably while prior-art status remains UNSEARCHED.","A shadow study does not authorize live waivers, publication decisions, or weakened review standards."],"closed_book_prior_art_boundary":"Prior-art status is UNSEARCHED. This assessment cannot determine whether philosophy journals or adjacent scholarly fields already use length waivers, nonstandard-format exceptions, blinded contribution screens, or capped experimental editorial tracks; no novelty or prevalence claim is supported."}