Hey there and welcome! Yes reputation is a major part and it places the whole process of curation among trusted people as well as people who have expertise in that particular area. In addition to that, every user will have a different reputation for every different community prior to their contribution in that particular community. And the payout is done every three days after the time of sharing an article.
In order to have a more clear idea about how the whole process of Relevant works, here's a very good article to start with written by one of the admins which will clear out all the questions hopefully.
[https://relevant.community/general/post/5f442f65800055001716f84f](https://relevant.community/general/post/5f442f65800055001716f84f)