For every manuscript you critique, you will earn a credit for a particular group. To submit your work to that group, you use X credits. X is a number set by your group.
The number of credits you should depends on the number of people in your group, what percentage of people you expect to critique a work (everybody? half? most?) and how long you’ve known your group members.
Ultimately, the credits system is there to prevent the situation of any one person only submitting work and not critiquing. In practice, this is unusual.
The default critique ratio (number of credits needed to submit) is 3. If you have a group of 7 or more and you are just starting out, you may consider bumping it up a little. If you have a group of 4, you may consider shifting it down so that your group isn’t reliant on 100% participation all the time. Even if your group plans to critique all submissions, it is helpful to give yourself a buffer in case a person misses a submission or is unable to critique one go round.
The group facilitator can change the critique ratio—so it’s okay to go with something and adjust as needed!
Yes. If your group would prefer not to use credits, you can set them to 0. You will still earn credits for your critiques, but you will not spend them.