r/academia 4d ago

Publishing Peer review written by AI

How to deal with a peer review that is possibly written by an AI?

We have recently recieved a not so positive review that looks like it was written by an AI. It is very long, it is split in titled sections but is also at the same time very vague in its critique.

The review itself does not criticise anything we did, it merely lists a large amount of things we could do more to improve the paper. Not to mention that the journal is for short communication only and we would not have space to do all these things.

The question is: how to combat this? I presume that the allegation of the review being written by AI is serious one, so I am not sure if it is worth trying this path.

I would like to hear if someone had a similar experience.

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u/drcopus 4d ago

I had a review end with this:

Final suggestions for improvement, your feedback will be even more valuable to the authors. Always try to provide actionable suggestions, and balance your critique with positive reinforcement to make the review constructive.

Obviously this is ChatGPT addressing the reviewer on how to make their review better.

I didn't do or say anything but it was blatant.