TMLR suspends 159 authors, lifts desk rejections to 53% amid 300% submission surge
thegautamkamath · x · 2026-10-16
TMLR's editors-in-chief detail how the journal is coping with a 300% year-over-year surge in submissions, including a 1300% rise in solo-authored papers and authors submitting 4-8 papers in weeks.
Key measures outlined:
- One-year review suspensions for policy violators and repeat low-quality submitters — 159 authors actioned in 12 months
- Author submission quotas with rules targeting contemporary AI-slop patterns
- Desk rejection rate raised from 6% to 53%, focusing on clarity
- Publicly naming major violations
- AI-assisted reviews evaluating soundness
The editors also interviewed authors of ten desk-rejected submissions to understand motivations, calling the results sobering. The post serves as a case study in how ML publication venues are defending review quality in the AI era.
More from Companies & People
- vLLM grew from a two-week side project to 500K GPUs; team raised $150M — a16z · 2026-10-16
- antirez: Tesla's announcement shows Europe's rare edge — knowing what not to build — antirez · 2026-10-16
- Jensen Huang's world tour: epic selfies with Altman, Isenberg and more — LinusEkenstam · 2026-10-16
- alec_helbling joins IBM Research as scientist at MIT-IBM Lab in Cambridge — alec_helbling · 2026-10-16
- Tsinghua professor's ApexIntelligence raises $50M to build self-evolving foundation models — DeryaTR_ · 2026-10-16
- FlashAttention creator Tri Dao joins Radical Numerics as scientific advisor — exnx · 2026-10-16