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I’ve only published a few papers, but this interview sounds extremely unusual to me (I mean, it is clearly a special thing that the editor is doing, which is fi

I’ve only published a few papers, but this interview sounds extremely unusual to me (I mean, it is clearly a special thing that the editor is doing, which is fine). I wouldn’t do something unethical, but if I had and the editor asked me for an interview like this, I’d know I’d probably been caught. Why is it unusual: it sounds extremely time-consuming. As to how worrying AI-generated papers are… it sounds more like a headache for the editors really. In general, journals don’t have to be perfect; mostly researchers read research papers. You already have to read critically (publish-or-perish has been a thing for a while, so there are plenty of not-so-great papers out there). Peer review is just the “entry” barrier, science is a social process and papers become more or less influential based on a fuzzy process of citation, conference talks, and peer-to-peer suggestions.

emil-lp 13d ago
> it sounds extremely time-consuming. For whom? Surely the authors can find an hour after submitting the paper to a journal? Beware that a reviewer easily spend a full week on reviewing a paper, and there are typically three of them. So if one hour of conversation can save three weeks work, it sounds worth it.
- bee_rider 13d ago
  I was thinking for the reviewer. Also note that I was only answering as to why it wasn’t done in the past. For the time comparison, I’m not sure, it doesn’t seem quite apples-to-apples: 1) It is scheduled time vs unscheduled. 2) There must be some base rate consideration… the papers being discussed here were planned to be desk-rejected. Maybe it could be a good process for saving papers that were going to be desk-rejected, but I dunno, that seems like it’d just lower the quality standards.
  - emil-lp 13d ago
    But it's not the reviewers who do it, it's the handling editor. Who spends relatively little time per paper (compared to authors and reviewers).
    - bee_rider 13d ago
      Honestly, I was sloppily thinking of the general reviewer/editor system as one thing (and didn’t notice that I’d lumped them together until you brought it up here). Good point. Although the editor has a lot more papers to handle, so I think they are probably busy as well.

emil-lp 13d ago

> it sounds extremely time-consuming. For whom? Surely the authors can find an hour after submitting the paper to a journal? Beware that a reviewer easily spend a full week on reviewing a paper, and there are typically three of them. So if one hour of conversation can save three weeks work, it sounds worth it.

bee_rider 13d ago
I was thinking for the reviewer. Also note that I was only answering as to why it wasn’t done in the past. For the time comparison, I’m not sure, it doesn’t seem quite apples-to-apples: 1) It is scheduled time vs unscheduled. 2) There must be some base rate consideration… the papers being discussed here were planned to be desk-rejected. Maybe it could be a good process for saving papers that were going to be desk-rejected, but I dunno, that seems like it’d just lower the quality standards.
- emil-lp 13d ago
  But it's not the reviewers who do it, it's the handling editor. Who spends relatively little time per paper (compared to authors and reviewers).
  - bee_rider 13d ago
    Honestly, I was sloppily thinking of the general reviewer/editor system as one thing (and didn’t notice that I’d lumped them together until you brought it up here). Good point. Although the editor has a lot more papers to handle, so I think they are probably busy as well.