Am I eligible to endorse?

Thank you for considering helping first-time researchers. Before you review or endorse anyone, it's worth confirming that arXiv considers you eligible to endorse in the right area. This article summarises what arXiv's pages say.

ResearchGuild is independent and not affiliated with arXiv. arXiv decides who can endorse; we can't change that, and the arXiv endorsement page is authoritative.

The basic rule

According to arXiv, to endorse you must have authored a certain number of papers within the endorsement domainEndorsement domainA group of related arXiv subject areas that share one endorsement. Being endorsed in one domain doesn't automatically cover another. you want to endorse for. arXiv says:

• the number depends on the subject area; and
• it has been set so that any active scientist who has been working in their field for a few years should be able to endorse, if their work has been submitted to arXiv and they're registered as an author of their papers.

We deliberately don't quote a specific number here, because arXiv sets it per area and we haven't found one universal figure on its public pages.

The time window

arXiv says that, to make sure endorsersEndorserAn arXiv author who is eligible to endorse in a subject area, which depends on their own recent papers there. On ResearchGuild, endorsers are volunteers who opt in to read abstracts. are active members of the community, it only counts papers submitted between three months and five years ago. So:

• a paper you posted last week doesn't count yet;
• papers from many years ago no longer count toward eligibility.

If your recent output has been in journals that aren't on arXiv, you may not currently be eligible even if you're very experienced.

Endorsement domains

Eligibility is per endorsement domain, not for arXiv as a whole. arXiv explains that domains are chosen to reflect related subject areas: most high-level subject areas (its examples include hep-th, cond-mat and q-bio) are endorsement domains, with the notable exception of physics, where individual subject classesCategory (subject class)arXiv's topic label for a paper, such as cs.AI (Artificial Intelligence) or cs.CL (Computation and Language). Moderators and readers use it to route and find papers. are domains.

For computer science specifically, we haven't found a clear statement in arXiv's public help pages about how cs categories map to endorsement domains. If you publish in several areas, check what your arXiv account says for the specific category an author is targeting.

Make sure you're registered as an author

arXiv says that if you would like to be able to endorse, the most important thing you can do is make sure you're registered as an author of your papers. If a co-author submitted your papers, they may not be linked to your account.

Things to check:

• Your papers are claimed in your arXiv account.
• Your name is consistent across papers.
• Optionally, link your ORCID iDORCID iDA free, persistent identifier for researchers, like 0000-0002-1825-0097, that links you to your work. Optional here.. arXiv's ORCID page says linking helps connect your arXiv works to your record in other systems. We haven't found a statement that linking ORCID affects endorsementEndorsementA statement, made on arXiv's own form by an established arXiv author, that you are someone who can reasonably contribute to a subject area. It is not peer review and doesn't guarantee acceptance. eligibility.

How the January 2026 change affects endorsers

As of January 2026, per arXiv, new authors are no longer endorsed automatically on the basis of an institutional email alone. Automatic endorsement now also requires prior authorship in the relevant domain, and everyone else seeks personal endorsement from an established arXiv author in the same domain. That means more first-time authors will be asking people like you, and careful, fair endorsers matter more than before.

How to check your own status

The simplest way is to look in your arXiv account, or to open an endorsement request an author sends you; arXiv's form will tell you whether you can endorse for that request. The exact interface can change, so follow arXiv's current instructions. If something looks wrong, contact arXiv through its support channels.

Eligible isn't the same as appropriate

Even if arXiv says you can endorse, ask yourself:

• Is this paper in an area I actually know?
• Can I judge whether the author knows the basics of the field?
• Do I have a conflict of interest?

If the answer to any of these is uncertain, it's fine to give feedback without endorsing, or to decline. See What an endorser is (and isn't) responsible for and How to decline kindly.

Joining ResearchGuild as an endorser

On ResearchGuild, endorsers opt in, and authors can only have a few reviewers at a time, so you won't be flooded with requests. You can manage your account in settings.