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		<img class="banner" src="https://huggingface.co/spaces/ICSAC-Institute/README/resolve/main/cover.png" alt="ICSAC — Institute for Complexity Science and Advanced Computing" />

		<h1>Institute for Complexity Science<br/>&amp; Advanced Computing</h1>
		<p class="tagline">
			Open review for independent researchers. <strong style="color:var(--ink);">Free to submit. No APCs. Ever.</strong>
			Accepted work publishes online first in <em>Persistence</em>, the Institute&rsquo;s journal, and is eligible for its annual print &amp; ebook edition.
		</p>
		<p class="meta"><a href="https://icsacinstitute.org">icsacinstitute.org</a></p>

		<blockquote class="stance">
			<strong>Academic publishing is broken, and the gatekeepers know it.</strong>
			Paywalls in front, four-figure APCs in back, opaque desk-rejects in the middle, plagiarism detectors that flag a researcher&rsquo;s
			<em>own</em> prior work as misconduct. ICSAC is the answer we built after the system told us no for the wrong reason.
		</blockquote>

		<h2>Why this exists</h2>
		<div class="case">
			<p>A paper from this lab was desk-rejected by a large commercial publisher&rsquo;s flagship journal on a 94% plagiarism flag &mdash; <strong>entirely from self-overlap with the author&rsquo;s own prior open-access papers</strong> on the same research program. Iterative thinking, properly cited, dressed up as misconduct by a content-matching tool and rubber-stamped by an editor who didn&rsquo;t read past the score.</p>
			<p><em>That is not peer review. That is liability-management automation wearing the costume of peer review.</em></p>
		</div>
		<p class="lede" style="margin-top:14px;">
			So we built the alternative in the open. A 5-reviewer AI panel, a Review-Quality-Control audit that scores the panel itself, and a human curation team that confirms, modifies, or overrides every recommendation, with its reasoning on the record.
			<strong>The redacted review record is published alongside the accepted paper.</strong> Receipts, in public.
		</p>
		<p class="lede">
			Prompts, rubrics, scoring code, citation verification, redaction layer, RQC audit &mdash; <strong>all published here, MIT-licensed</strong>. Fork it. Audit it. Run it yourself. If we get something wrong, you can see exactly where.
		</p>

		<h2>The journal &mdash; Persistence</h2>
		<ul class="bullets">
			<li><strong>Free to submit. Free to read. No APCs &mdash; ever.</strong> No fast-track for friends, no slow-walk for outsiders.</li>
			<li><strong>Online first, then print.</strong> Every accepted paper is published in <em>Persistence</em> the day its DOI registers, with a permanent free online record of the full review trail. The annual paperback + ebook gathers the year&rsquo;s articles it can carry. Volume 1 in print <strong>May 2027</strong>.</li>
			<li><strong>Authors retain copyright.</strong> DOI on accept under the Institute&rsquo;s own prefix. ORCID-gated submission, 5&ndash;10 day turnaround.</li>
		</ul>
		<div class="cta-row">
			<a class="cta" href="https://icsacinstitute.org/submit">&rarr; Submit a paper</a>
			<a class="cta warm" href="https://icsacinstitute.org/journal">About Persistence</a>
		</div>

		<h2>On Hugging Face</h2>
		<a class="pin" href="https://huggingface.co/spaces/ICSAC-Institute/editorial-system">
			<div class="pin-title">editorial-system</div>
			<div class="pin-sub">SPACE &middot; STATIC &middot; MIT</div>
			<p class="pin-desc">The open-source AI editorial pipeline that receives, reviews, and adjudicates every submission to ICSAC and to <em>Persistence</em>. Submission handler, rubrics, prompts, citation checks, redaction layer, and the audit pass that scores the panel itself.</p>
		</a>
		<p class="footnote">
			One defensive exception: the prompt-injection signal in the RQC audit is withheld, to avoid teaching adversarial submissions what to evade. Everything else is in the open.
		</p>

		<h2>Affiliate with the Institute</h2>
		<p class="lede">
			For independent researchers, postdocs between posts, retired scientists who never stopped working, and anyone whose work is real but whose letterhead is not. <strong>Annual affiliation</strong> includes:
		</p>
		<ul class="bullets">
			<li><strong>A verifiable ICSAC ID</strong> in the form <code>ICSAC-NNNNN</code>, listed in our member directory (ORCID sign-in).</li>
			<li><strong>A printable digital credential (PDF)</strong> with a QR code that resolves to your public verification page at <code>icsacinstitute.org/verify/&lt;id&gt;</code>.</li>
			<li><strong>The right to list &ldquo;Affiliate Researcher, ICSAC&rdquo;</strong> on future works &mdash; papers, preprints, talks, conference proceedings &mdash; where appropriate and consistent with the venue&rsquo;s affiliation guidelines.</li>
			<li><em>Persistence</em> digest newsletter, discount on the annual print, eligibility for merit-based promotion to Research Fellow.</li>
		</ul>
		<p class="footnote">
			Affiliation does <strong>not</strong> include review or curation rights &mdash; those are earned through demonstrated participation, not purchased.
		</p>
		<div class="cta-row">
			<a class="cta" href="https://icsacinstitute.org/community/membership-affiliation">&rarr; Become an Affiliate Researcher</a>
		</div>

		<h2>Where the rest lives</h2>
		<ul class="links">
			<li><span class="ico">SITE</span><span class="desc"><a href="https://icsacinstitute.org">icsacinstitute.org</a></span></li>
			<li><span class="ico">JRNL</span><span class="desc"><a href="https://icsacinstitute.org/journal"><em>Persistence</em></a> &mdash; online first, annual print + ebook, no APCs</span></li>
			<li><span class="ico">PUB</span><span class="desc"><a href="https://icsacinstitute.org/publications">Accepted papers</a> with full review records</span></li>
			<li><span class="ico">SUB</span><span class="desc"><a href="https://icsacinstitute.org/submit">Submit a manuscript</a><small>Free &middot; ORCID-gated &middot; DOI, arXiv ID, or PDF &middot; 5&ndash;10 day turnaround</small></span></li>
			<li><span class="ico">AFF</span><span class="desc"><a href="https://icsacinstitute.org/community/membership-affiliation">Affiliate Researcher</a> &mdash; annual, verifiable ID + QR-credentialed</span></li>
			<li><span class="ico">ID</span><span class="desc"><a href="https://icsacinstitute.org/verify">Verify a member ID</a></span></li>
			<li><span class="ico">ARC</span><span class="desc"><a href="https://zenodo.org/communities/icsac">Zenodo community</a> (archive)</span></li>
			<li><span class="ico">SRC</span><span class="desc"><a href="https://github.com/ICSAC">github.com/ICSAC</a></span></li>
		</ul>

		<h2>Support the work</h2>
		<p class="lede">
			ICSAC runs on direct contributions from people who think rigorous, accessible open review is worth keeping alive outside the gatekept circuit.
			<strong>No grants, no university overhead, no APCs &mdash; so the math has to come from somewhere.</strong>
		</p>
		<div class="cta-row">
			<a class="cta stripe" href="https://icsacinstitute.org/community/donate">&rarr; Donate &middot; Support &middot; Sponsor</a>
			<a class="cta warm" href="https://manifund.org/projects/icsac-ai-assisted-peer-review-for-independent-researchers">Back us on Manifund</a>
		</div>
		<p class="footnote">
			One-time donation, annual Supporter (name on /supporters), or annual Sponsor (logo + link). All run through Stripe at <a href="https://icsacinstitute.org/community/donate">icsacinstitute.org/community/donate</a>. ICSAC is not a registered 501(c)(3); contributions are not tax-deductible.
		</p>

		<p class="foot">
			<a href="mailto:info@icsacinstitute.org">info@icsacinstitute.org</a>
			&middot; Independent and donor-funded
		</p>

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