The volume of scientific manuscripts is growing faster than the capacity to evaluate them, yet the institutions that govern peer review have remained largely unchanged. The result is a widening mismatch: reviewer scarcity, noisier assessments, and declining confidence in editorial decisions. Every scientist wants better reviews, but review quality depends on the total burden, which no single author can shift. To isolate this tension, we provide a game-theoretic thought experiment: a voluntary lottery in which authors accept a chance of random pre-review rejection, reducing reviewer burden and improving the quality of surviving evaluations. We show that a Nash equilibrium emerges in which authors voluntarily enter the lottery. Scientists who care about the literature they read, not just the papers they publish, will opt in, raising the quality of published science for all.

翻译：科学手稿的数量增长速度超过了评估能力，然而管理同行评审的制度却基本保持不变。结果导致一种日益扩大的不匹配：审稿人稀缺、评估结果更加嘈杂，以及人们对编辑决策的信心下降。每位科学家都希望获得更优质的评审，但评审质量取决于总工作量，而任何单个作者都无法改变这一状况。为了剖析这一矛盾，我们提出了一个博弈论思想实验：一种自愿抽签机制，作者接受随机预审拒稿的概率，从而减少审稿人负担并提高幸存评估的质量。我们证明存在一个纳什均衡，即作者自愿参与抽签。那些关心其阅读文献（而不仅是其发表论文）质量的科学家会选择加入，从而提升所有已发表科学研究的质量。