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@lakens@mastodon.social

Post #1214218

2026-04-16 08:48 UTC

The first time a serious journal asks me to review a paper that is completely written by AI. How do we deal with this? Is it fair to write 'this is either written by AI, or mirrors it's lack of original content'? How do I deal with the 1% probability a human wrote it anyway?

Replies (2)

  • @lakens@mastodon.social When I receive such papers as an editor, I reject them under the mere appearance that they are completely written by AI. If the author wants to come back after this rejection, they're free to do so.

    Open ##4192510

  • @lakens@mastodon.social The safest bet might be sticking quite closely to what you think is wrong with the manuscript, rather than whether the text was generated. You can then mention your suspicions in the confidential communication to the editor (if the journal has this). You don’t have to go through each individual issue, a few egregious examples might suffice, but if even that would be too much work, you might want to decline the review and refer to your suspicion in comm to the editor. I twice had manuscripts that on closer inspection had glaring issues suggesting they were pasted together rather than written (e.g., verbatim but out-of-context use of titles of papers, odd phrasings). In that case the suspicion was more paper mill than LLM, but there was a similar uncertainty - so I highlighted a few issues in the review but also asked the editor to consider whether this manuscript would meet their journal guidelines (in my case both journals had a paragraph on paper mills in their policy).

    Open ##4192518