When Reviewer Scarcity Becomes a Reason for Rejection, Scientific Integrity Is at Risk. Really!

There are reports that now that ML & AI is more being used to produce (low quality) research papers. Hopefully, such papers can be eliminated quickly.

Second, why don't we use more ML & AI to do reviews of newly submitted papers?

"... I had submitted a manuscript to a journal whose scope explicitly encompasses the physiological and behavioral dimensions of my study. My paper was rejected. However, the editorial decision did not question the study’s relevance or scientific validity. Instead, it was rejected solely because the editor was “unable to find the required number of reviewers,” despite inviting approximately 20 individuals, according to the email that I received. ..."

My suggestion submit the paper to another journal! Perhaps a journal that is not even closely related to this research.

Maybe this journal requires too many reviewers! Sometimes less is more!

Maybe the editor was telling the author in diplomatic terms that the paper was not acceptable and the editor could not waste the scarce resources of any reviewers on this paper! 😊 According to his Google Scholar profile, his total lifetime citation count is only 2761, which is very low or he publishes only narrowly focused niche papers for a small number of specialists.

 

When Reviewer Scarcity Becomes a Reason for Rejection, Scientific Integrity Is at Risk | The Scientist "If journals reject papers due to review shortages, the peer review process itself becomes compromised."