It's the "peer-reviewed" part that should be raising eyebrows, not the AI-generated part. How the gibberish images were generated is secondary to the fact that the peer reviewers just waved the obvious nonsense through without even the most cursory inspection.
In another article, it said that one of the reviewers did being up the nonsense images, but he was just completely ignored. Which is an equally big problem.
I've heard some of my more senior colleagues call frontiers a scam even before this regarding editorial practices there.
It's actually furstratingly common for some reviewer comments to be completely ignored, so it's possible someone raised a flag and no one did anything about it.
Frontiers has something like a 90%+ publish rate, which for any "per reviewed" journal is ridiculously high. They have also been in previous scandals where a large portion of their editorial staff were sacked (no pun intended).
They sent me an email once inviting me to be a guest editor. I thought it would be a cool experience and a neat thing to have on the CV.
I mentioned it to my advisor at the time and they told me that frontiers does that pretty often and that these special issues don't amount to anything.
Frontiers isn't alone of course. MDPI is notorious for shitty editorial practices too.
The biggest problem with Frontiers for me is that there are some handy survey articles that are cited like 500 times. It seems that Interdisciplinary surveys are hard to publish in a traditional journal, and as a result 500 articles cited this handy overview article for readers who would need an overview.
The article I checked was in a reasonable quality, and it's a shame I can't cite it just because it's in Frontiers.
We're in that interim period where people don't understand the technology at all but still think it's capable of anything, so even people who absolutely should know better are going to be misusing it.
15 Comments
FaceDeer@kbin.social · 30 pts · 2y
It's the "peer-reviewed" part that should be raising eyebrows, not the AI-generated part. How the gibberish images were generated is secondary to the fact that the peer reviewers just waved the obvious nonsense through without even the most cursory inspection.
Nawor3565@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 16 pts · 2y
In another article, it said that one of the reviewers did being up the nonsense images, but he was just completely ignored. Which is an equally big problem.
bedrooms@kbin.social · 5 pts · 2y
It's how this publisher works. They make it insanely difficult for reviewers to reject a submission.
YMS@kbin.social · 2 pts · 2y
It's in this article.
oyfrog@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 2y
I've heard some of my more senior colleagues call frontiers a scam even before this regarding editorial practices there.
It's actually furstratingly common for some reviewer comments to be completely ignored, so it's possible someone raised a flag and no one did anything about it.
Jesusaurus@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 2y
Frontiers has something like a 90%+ publish rate, which for any "per reviewed" journal is ridiculously high. They have also been in previous scandals where a large portion of their editorial staff were sacked (no pun intended).
oyfrog@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2y
They sent me an email once inviting me to be a guest editor. I thought it would be a cool experience and a neat thing to have on the CV.
I mentioned it to my advisor at the time and they told me that frontiers does that pretty often and that these special issues don't amount to anything.
Frontiers isn't alone of course. MDPI is notorious for shitty editorial practices too.
bedrooms@kbin.social · 2 pts · 2y
The biggest problem with Frontiers for me is that there are some handy survey articles that are cited like 500 times. It seems that Interdisciplinary surveys are hard to publish in a traditional journal, and as a result 500 articles cited this handy overview article for readers who would need an overview.
The article I checked was in a reasonable quality, and it's a shame I can't cite it just because it's in Frontiers.
MotoAsh@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2y
bedrooms@kbin.social · 1 pts · 2y
Actually, figures should be checked during the reviewing process. It's not an excuse.
MotoAsh@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2y
bedrooms@kbin.social · 1 pts · 2y
No, "should be" as in, it must be reviewed but can be skipped if there's a concern like revealing the author identity in a double-blind process.
Froyn@kbin.social · 7 pts · 2y
I enjoy reading between the lines. "Had the rat penis not gone viral, the paper would not have been retracted"
EmptyRadar@kbin.social · 5 pts · 2y
We're in that interim period where people don't understand the technology at all but still think it's capable of anything, so even people who absolutely should know better are going to be misusing it.
eran_morad@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2y
Deykun@kbin.social · 2 pts · 2y
The paper: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcell.2023.1339390/full
sheepishly@kbin.social · 1 pts · 2y
Sokal affair but with more rat ballz
TimeSquirrel@kbin.social · 1 pts · 2y
young_broccoli@kbin.social · 1 pts · 2y
Reminds me of this.