TMLR editor spent 20+ hours interviewing low-quality submitters: they don't understand their own papers

serrjoa · x · 2026-09-17

For TMLR, Nihar Shah ran a heroic experiment: he spent 20-25 hours over two weeks interviewing authors of seemingly low-quality submissions about their own papers.

The finding confirmed long-held suspicions: the people submitting these papers have no idea what is going on in them. AI researchers sharing the thread say it exposes how mass low-quality submissions are damaging the field's peer review ecosystem.

Related event: TMLR Quizzes Authors Who Can't Explain Their Own Papers(14 posts)→

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