arXiv limits submissions to two papers per person per month, responding to the flood of AI papers hitting the preprint server

arXiv will tighten its submission limit to two papers per person per calendar month starting October 1, 2026, because AI tools have pushed monthly submissions past 40,000 papers. In September 2026 the platform received 40,363 submissions, compared with 20,569 in September 2024 and 9,869 in September 2016; the cs.AI category grew more than sixfold over two years and generated nearly 9,000 support tickets. The new rule applies to all categories and only to submitters; co-authors are not affected. Rejected papers still count toward the limit, while deletion before publication returns the quota. Thomas G. Dietterich, chair of the editorial advisory committee, said a small number of authors submit large volumes of low-quality papers, taking up too much of reviewers' time. arXiv calls this a temporary measure and plans to use newly obtained funding for technical upgrades to handle AI-generated content.