I do not know who the authors are. However, the journal does. In my opinion, such behavior should lead to a lifetime ban from ever submitting an article to the journal again. This should even apply to all journals from the same publisher. The publisher should also approach the university of the authors and demand disciplinary consequences. If these are not made, then the entire university should be banned. 3/3
Jun 2, 2026, 9:01 AM@wviechtb what do you say is the role of the journal here, who, after all, decided to ask you to review the paper?
@egonw I can't really blame the journal/editor. The article looked good on first sight. Maybe they could try to use genAI checks though.
@wviechtb @egonw I think the only thing you can do is to report it to the editors and ask them to tell you the outcome. If they do not reply then never review for them again and tell them why next time. If their reply is unsatisfactory big publishers do have ethics/compliance departments to whom you could escalate it. They need your reviews more than you need to do reviews.
@mdewey @egonw I did report this to the editor and they were really appreciative of the report. There are also apparently internal discussions going on about this type of behavior. I haven't heard about the decision from the journal but I sent a follow-up mail today, as I would like to know how they are handling this.
@wviechtb
I second this (and I think this is what arXiv is planning to do, right?).
However, I also see potential problems for interdisciplinary research. I often have to trust that my coauthors are doing their job well because my own expertise is maybe too limited to catch their mistakes. After all, this is exactly the reason why we collaborate, to combine our different sets of expertise… so maybe combine what you suggest with compulsory author contribution statements?