{
 "id": "plate-xxvi",
 "number": "XXVI",
 "title": "The Drift",
 "act": {
  "number": "VIII",
  "title": "Eras & Territories"
 },
 "corpus_scope": "ICLR 2018–2026 · 1,009,592 units",
 "question": "Is what reviewers scrutinize a stable feature of peer review, or has it drifted over nine years?",
 "page_url": "https://atlas-of-judgment.pages.dev/",
 "figures": [
  {
   "id": "fig-26a",
   "title": "What reviewers inspect, 2018 → 2026",
   "deck": "What reviewers inspect drifted over nine years, toward compute cost and statistical rigor.",
   "dom_host": "#drift-obj",
   "claims": [
    {
     "id": "26a-objects-rise",
     "statement": "The hygiene turn: compute cost (+3.2pp), statistical rigor (+3.0pp), baselines and reproducibility rise.",
     "value": {
      "quantity": [
       0.032,
       0.03
      ],
      "unit": "percentage_point_change_2018_to_2026",
      "objects": [
       "compute_cost",
       "stats_metrics"
      ]
     },
     "source_island": "drift-data.json",
     "source_path": "object_share[]",
     "derivation": "object_share[object][2026] − object_share[object][2018], ×100, in percentage points; baselines_ablations and reproducibility also rise over the same span but are named without a printed pp figure in the caption",
     "recompute": "scripts/build_drift_data.py",
     "dom_ref": "data-drift26a=\"obj-rise\"",
     "verified": "claim recomputed from source island, 2026-08-25",
     "caveat_refs": [
      "label-consistency-check",
      "reviewer-vs-submission-confound"
     ]
    },
    {
     "id": "26a-objects-fall",
     "statement": "Clarity (−4.9pp) and theory (−4.1pp) recede.",
     "value": {
      "quantity": [
       -0.049,
       -0.041
      ],
      "unit": "percentage_point_change_2018_to_2026",
      "objects": [
       "clarity",
       "theory"
      ]
     },
     "source_island": "drift-data.json",
     "source_path": "object_share[]",
     "derivation": "object_share[object][2026] − object_share[object][2018], ×100, in percentage points",
     "recompute": "scripts/build_drift_data.py",
     "dom_ref": "data-drift26a=\"obj-fall\"",
     "verified": "claim recomputed from source island, 2026-08-25",
     "caveat_refs": [
      "label-consistency-check",
      "reviewer-vs-submission-confound"
     ]
    },
    {
     "id": "26a-clarity-relative-fall",
     "statement": "In relative terms, clarity's share fell 37%.",
     "value": {
      "quantity": -0.37,
      "unit": "relative_change_2018_to_2026",
      "object": "clarity"
     },
     "source_island": "drift-data.json",
     "source_path": "object_share.clarity[]",
     "derivation": "(object_share.clarity[2026] − object_share.clarity[2018]) / object_share.clarity[2018] = (0.0831 − 0.1319) / 0.1319 = −37.0%",
     "recompute": "scripts/build_drift_data.py",
     "dom_ref": null,
     "verified": "checked against shipped JSON, 2026-08-25",
     "caveat_refs": [
      "label-consistency-check",
      "reviewer-vs-submission-confound"
     ]
    }
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "fig-26b",
   "title": "The standards they invoke, 2018 → 2026",
   "deck": "The standards they invoke drifted with it.",
   "dom_host": "#drift-rea",
   "claims": [
    {
     "id": "26b-standards-fall",
     "statement": "Among standards, the novelty standard and the presentation-as-trust standard — judging a paper's care by how it is written — each fall 3.5pp, while cost-benefit and claim-evidence matching climb.",
     "value": {
      "quantity": -0.035,
      "unit": "percentage_point_change_2018_to_2026",
      "standards": [
       "novelty_standard",
       "presentation_trust"
      ]
     },
     "source_island": "drift-data.json",
     "source_path": "reasoning_share[]",
     "derivation": "reasoning_share[standard][2026] − reasoning_share[standard][2018], ×100, in percentage points; cost_benefit and claim_evidence_match rise over the same span but are named without a printed pp figure in the caption",
     "recompute": "scripts/build_drift_data.py",
     "dom_ref": "data-drift26b=\"rea-fall\"",
     "verified": "claim recomputed from source island, 2026-08-25",
     "caveat_refs": [
      "label-consistency-check",
      "reviewer-vs-submission-confound"
     ]
    }
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "fig-26c",
   "title": "The hardening: nine-year vitals",
   "deck": "Three vital signs of the venue, read across nine years.",
   "dom_host": "#vitals",
   "claims": [
    {
     "id": "26c-post-rebuttal-halved",
     "statement": "The share of post-response judgments that weaken or reverse has halved, 8.2% in 2018 (101 of 1,239 post-response units) to 4.2% in 2026 (1,799 of 43,267).",
     "value": {
      "quantity": [
       0.0815,
       0.0416
      ],
      "unit": "share_of_post_response_units",
      "n": {
       "2018": 1239,
       "2026": 43267
      }
     },
     "source_island": "drift-data.json",
     "source_path": "meta[]",
     "derivation": "(meta[year].weakened + meta[year].reversed) / meta[year].post_response_units, for 2018 and 2026. The deposition and the page previously printed 7.7% and 3.4%; no denominator in the shipped drift-data.json reproduces those, and the series was corrected to the shipped values 2026-08-26. The correction makes “halved” exact (a factor of 0.51) where the old pair overstated the fall.",
     "recompute": "scripts/build_drift_data.py",
     "dom_ref": null,
     "verified": "claim recomputed from source island; series corrected, 2026-08-26",
     "caveat_refs": []
    },
    {
     "id": "26c-negativity-stable",
     "statement": "Negativity in the nine-year corpus holds near 77% all nine years (the 2026 corpus reads 71.8% — a different memo style, the same story).",
     "value": {
      "quantity": 0.77,
      "unit": "share_negative_units_approx"
     },
     "source_island": "drift-data.json",
     "source_path": "valence_share.negative[]",
     "derivation": "valence_share.negative[year], across all nine years, hovering in a narrow band around 0.77 (min 0.7485 in 2023, max 0.7907 in 2018)",
     "recompute": "scripts/build_drift_data.py",
     "dom_ref": null,
     "verified": "claim recomputed from source island, 2026-08-25",
     "caveat_refs": []
    }
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "fig-26d",
   "title": "The currents: four distributions, nine years",
   "deck": "Four distributions morphing through nine years — turn the dial, or stack the years like a mountain range.",
   "dom_host": "#cur-flow",
   "claims": [
    {
     "id": "26d-four-scoring-forms",
     "statement": "The venue has used four scoring forms: ten labeled levels in 2018–19 and 2021, a four-point reject/weak-reject/weak-accept/accept form in 2020, a six-level ladder 2022–25, and even numbers only in 2026.",
     "value": {
      "quantity": 4,
      "unit": "count_distinct_scoring_forms_2018_2026"
     },
     "source_island": "currents-data.json",
     "source_path": "scores[]",
     "derivation": "distinct rating-scale shapes observed per year in the scores distribution, grouped into four eras",
     "recompute": "scripts/build_currents_data.py",
     "dom_ref": null,
     "verified": "claim recomputed from source island, 2026-08-25",
     "caveat_refs": [
      "era-scale-caveat"
     ]
    }
   ]
  }
 ],
 "caveats": [
  {
   "id": "label-consistency-check",
   "text": "The share of units the labeller places in the same category on a held-out check is the same in the early years as in the late ones (0.81), so the drift measured here is a change in what reviewers wrote, not a change in how well the labels fit older text.",
   "scope": "all Fig. 26a / 26b drift-share claims",
   "verified_by": "Appendix II"
  },
  {
   "id": "reviewer-vs-submission-confound",
   "text": "What the series cannot separate is reviewers changing from submissions changing: it measures what got written, not why.",
   "scope": "all Fig. 26a / 26b drift-share claims",
   "verified_by": null
  },
  {
   "id": "era-scale-caveat",
   "text": "The venue's scoring scale changed four times over 2018–2026 (ten labeled levels in 2018–19 and 2021, a four-point form in 2020, a six-level ladder 2022–25, even numbers only in 2026); because the rungs themselves moved, compare the shapes of the score distributions across years, not their raw positions.",
   "scope": "Fig. 26d SCORES GIVEN comparisons across years",
   "verified_by": "Method page § 10, the moving ruler"
  }
 ],
 "links": {
  "recompute_scripts": [
   "scripts/build_drift_data.py",
   "scripts/build_currents_data.py"
  ],
  "data": [
   "/api/v1/data/drift-data.json",
   "/api/v1/data/currents-data.json"
  ],
  "related_plates": [
   "plate-ii",
   "plate-iii",
   "plate-xxvii"
  ]
 }
}