TACL editor: up to 2/3 of submissions desk-rejected monthly amid flood of AI-written papers
EhudReiter · x · 2026-09-08
NLG researcher and TACL editor Ehud Reiter argues desk rejection has become an "unfortunate necessity." Initially skeptical—he once received unfair desk rejects himself—he now supports the practice due to surging submissions, including LLM-written papers and CV-padding authors with little interest in science.
- Common desk-reject reasons: wrong format, hallucinated citations, LLM-written text, off-topic content, weak substance; one extreme case was a 40-page single-column Word doc unrelated to NLP, apparently submitted by an AI agent to many venues
- In some months, 2/3 of TACL submissions get desk rejected, though the number fluctuates
- All non-format desk rejects are double-checked by a second editor
- His stance: no obligation to provide feedback on such papers
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