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AWSAR Awarded Popular Science Stories
Towards an AI-Assisted Peer Review System
THE AUTHOR
Tirthankar Ghosal*
Indian Institute of Technology Patna Email: tirthankar.pcs16@iitp.ac.in
“Dear Mr Harsh, Thank you for submitting your manuscript ‘Impact of ...’ to the ‘Journal of ....’ After careful consideration by our editors, we regret to inform you that we must decline this submission on editorial grounds and have subsequently decided to not send the paper out to external peer reviewers.” ... blinked his email. Another desk rejection!! Harsh let the email sink in slowly. It was his third rejection in a row and that too from the editor’s desk. He could not believe that after three months of submission this is what he got in response to his correspondence. The editor did not even consider sending his manuscript to the reviewers. It pained him to realise, not only did the editor dislike his toil; he disliked it sufficiently to circumvent its progress through the review process. What is going wrong with me? He mumbled At least he
bothered to read it! My guide is not an expert in this field; he is finding very little time for me. What if ...
THE EDITOR
“Dear Sir, You would be pleased to know that I have been elevated to the position of Associate Editor in the highly reputed Journal of ...” Dr Saha finished typing her email to Director IIT... and Professor-in-Charge Public Relations. Another one ticked off my bucket list.... she looked out of her cabin window, smiling. Little did she comprehend that this job could be so demanding. Regular classes, evaluations, meetings, PhD students, invited talks, Professor-in-Charge Guest House, and now an added responsibility. To go through these huge number of submissions to this popular journal, check plagiarism, decide relevance, find suitable reviewers, coordinate and write responses... an array of non-escaping tasks. She found most of the submissions are uninformed ones, not falling within the aims and scope of the Journal of ... and even if they fall, most are average-merit, not warranting further review. Sometimes I wonder how people could write so much trash and send these many irrelevant articles. Why don’t they just consult the published papers and decide wisely about their work? What if.... she sighed in exasperation.
* Mr. Tirthankar Ghosal, Ph.D. Scholar from Indian Institute of Technology, Patna, is pursuing his research on “Investigating AI Techniques in Various Aspects of Academic Peer Review.” His popular science story entitled “Towards an Artificial intelligence Assisted Peer Review System” has been selected for AWSAR Award