Three years ago, the editors at a top academic journal in finance were concerned. A lot of venture capital was flowing into fintech, or financial technology, but there wasn’t much research about the topic coming from academics, who are known for their rigorous testing and analysis. So they decided to adopt a new editorial protocol to encourage more research: They would accept a paper regardless of the final results, taking pressure off the researchers to have conclusive findings. Of course, proposals for papers have to pass tough scrutiny first to get pre-accepted. It worked. The Review of Financial Studies received 156 proposals from 409 authors representing 183 universities and 22 research organizations or government agencies. They came from more than 20 countries, and nearly half were from outside North America. The top nations outside of the U.S. were China, Germany, U.K., Australia, Canada and India.…