The Unjournal

The Unjournal is a US-registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded by David Reinstein that commissions public, journal-independent evaluation and quantitative rating of research relevant to global priorities, with an initial focus on economics, quantitative social science, and policy. The organization does not publish research itself; instead, it identifies impactful work hosted on open platforms, commissions paid expert evaluations, and publishes the resulting ratings, feedback, and author responses openly on its PubPub platform. The project originated in early 2022 when Reinstein received an ACX/Long-Term Future Fund grant to pilot the concept. The first call for participants and advisory board members went out in June 2022, and the first evaluation, covering a resilient foods paper by Denkenberger et al., was published in February 2023. The organization received a major $565,000 grant from the Survival and Flourishing Fund in 2023, enabling significant expansion. Additional funding has come from the EA Infrastructure Fund and the Long-Term Future Fund. As of late 2025, The Unjournal has completed more than 55 evaluation packages across diverse research topics spanning global health, development economics, catastrophic risks, animal welfare, and scientific progress. The organization has built a pool of over 300 registered evaluators, including more than 100 PhD holders. Evaluators are compensated an average of $450 per evaluation, and the organization awards financial prizes for particularly strong evaluation work, with 2024-25 prize winners sharing $6,600. The management team is led by founding director David Reinstein, an economist with 25 years of experience including positions at UC Berkeley, the University of Essex, and Rethink Priorities, alongside co-director Anirudh Tagat from Monk Prayogshala. The broader management and operations team includes about seven people, supported by a 15-member advisory board featuring researchers from institutions such as Columbia University, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Open Philanthropy. The organization operates at approximately 1.65 full-time equivalent staff. The Unjournal has also launched a Pivotal Questions initiative, which starts by identifying the questions most pivotal to key funding and policy decisions, then sources and evaluates research that informs those questions. This represents a more direct approach to impact compared to the standard model of evaluating papers that show general potential for influence. The organization partners with impact-focused organizations including Founders Pledge and Animal Charity Evaluators on this work.