Post #1844118

The #ai tariff we must all pay for Sam, Elon, Zuck and various other pathologically needy people we're supposed to soothe shows up everywhere. And it's not only money, but the time of our lives-- which comes in a limited supply. "Philip Cohen, a sociologist at the University of Maryland in College Park who co-founded the SocArXiv preprint server in 2016, says that moderation at SocArXiv operates in a similar way to desk rejections at journals, in which manuscripts are rejected without being sent for peer review. But he makes it clear that the moderators are screening submissions rather than judging their quality. “Is this basically the shape of a scientific paper, can we identify these people? That’s the level of scrutiny we’re giving them.” Cohen, who was interviewed as part of Chtena’s and Fleerackers’ study, says that he sometimes has to moderate the moderators, asking them to “dial back their reviewing a little” because personal interest or curiosity can come into play. He also acknowledges that moderation has evolved. Originally, SocArXiv moderated preprints only after they were posted online, but that changed quickly because many manuscripts were being uploaded with “messed-up metadata”, he says. The uptick in junk science submitted to SocArXiv, probably generated by AI, has made things even more difficult and time-consuming, Cohen adds. And it’s taken its toll on the moderators. “It certainly has made it less fun — more like police work and less like helping people get their work out.”" #Preprint https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01203-6