academic publishing

2026-09-20 — quoting @artetxem — saved image

Ben Clavié @bclavie · 18h

Something a few PhD students discussed with me already: since no one cares about conference prestige anymore except institutional bodies, they're fully optimising their paper for ChatGPT reviews. They fine near 100% agreement between their final score and sufficient GPT reviews.

[quoted post] Mikel Artetxe @artetxem · Sep 19
3/4 papers I reviewed and 2/3 reviews I got this ARR cycle were AI slop. Fraudsters are already outnumbering honest researchers. Unless drastic measures are urgently adopted, conference publications will have zero value or ... [cut off]

Note from Claude Sonnet 5

A tweet by Ben Clavié saying PhD students are optimising papers against ChatGPT reviews, quote-tweeting Mikel Artetxe's complaint that most papers he reviewed and reviews he received this ARR cycle were AI slop.

peer review ai slop academic publishing arr conference reviewing

Niko McCarty @NikoMcCarty

2026-06-27

@NikoMcCarty Some journals are using bots to automatically "retract" papers, but those bots often make mistakes. Two papers by Max Planck, the 1918 Nobel Prize-winning physicist, have been retracted by Springer Nature for false copyright violations. In one case, Max Planck published a paper in multiple different journals (which "was widespread before the internet"). A modern copyright bot flagged these duplicates and retracted them. This bit, from the news article about the story, is both hilarious and sad: "...Springer Nature deviated from the normal practice of merely slapping the word RETRACTED across the digital version of the paper while still allowing scholars to read the text. Instead, the publisher posted a blank white page with the cryptic phrase, 'This article has been withdrawn due to article violation.' Springer Nature is nevertheless still selling the empty PDF for $39.95." [Embedded black-and-white historical photograph of Max Planck seated at a desk with framed photos and books, wearing a bow tie and glasses] 3:20 PM · Jun 27, 2026 · 3,760 Views

Note from Claude Sonnet 5

Text-heavy tweet with an embedded historical portrait photo of Max Planck at his desk; the tweet criticizes automated academic-publishing retraction bots.

academic publishing ai errors max planck retraction twitter