ChatGPT, write my article introduction! And editors versus referees

This paper with an introduction brazenly written by ChatGPT attracted a lot of attention last week. How is it that the first line of the introduction could remain in the final version without anyone (authors, editors, referees, proofing staff) noticing? 

Some said this was no big deal - aren't paper introductions boilerplate junk that nobody reads anyway? Yes and no. While an expert in the field might not expect to learn anything new from reading a paper introduction, it is nevertheless important as a means for the authors to convince the reader that they sufficiently understand the context of the research and are in a position to make a novel and significant contribution.

Others argued this was an example of the failure of peer review and the current scientific publishing system - junk papers that no one (not even the authors!) read.

Who exactly is at fault here (apart from the authors, obviously) - the journal editors or the referees?

Actually, it is not the referees' job to proofread manuscripts! Many referees will not bother to laboriously point out all the obvious typos in a manuscript and will purely focus on the scientific content in their reports. Sloppiness that the authors fail to notice themselves will detract from the credibility of the science reported and may be more damning than scathing technical criticism by the referees that might not be adequately addressed in the final paper!

The editors should have caught this in their initial screening. One of the roles of an editor is to curate content and ensure that the valuable time of the volunteer referees is not wasted on obviously incorrect, unconvincing, or not even wrong manuscripts. At the same time, we don't want to waste the authors' time by agreeing to send the manuscript out for review and then being unable to secure willing referees!

At Physical Review A we desk reject about half of the manuscripts we receive without sending out for peer review. While this might sound like a lot, these manuscripts tend to be of much lower quality than those that are eventually published. There are several red flags that make us lean towards desk rejection:

Out of journal scope. Does the manuscript report results that are of interest to the readers of the journal? One simple way to gauge this is to check the reference list of the finished manuscript - if you are only referring to works from other disciplines, this is not by itself grounds for rejection, but it is a hint that you need to be particularly careful with explaining the relevance of your work to the journal's specific audience.

Poor presentation. Obvious typos. Ugly figures. No figures (passable in rare cases). Too many figures. Illegible axis markers. Incorrectly formatted equations and symbols. Basic stuff, but many authors sadly cannot be bothered.

Transfer after rejection from a sister journal. This one is surprisingly common, particularly for research topics which fall in the scope of multiple APS journals. Most often we see transfers from PR Applied and PRB, which have higher impact factors, so the authors decide to try their luck with PRA. But the standards of all these journals are the same, regardless of their impact factors that fluctuate from year to year. This means that rejection from PR Applied or PRB generally precludes publication in PRA, except in special cases.

No significant new physics. This is the most controversial. Who is the editor to decide what is significant - isn't that the job of the referees? We do lean towards giving the benefit of the doubt and sending out to referees for this one. The manuscripts that fail this test generally lack the "so, what?" factor - assuming all the claims are correct, have we learned anything new? It is always possible to tweak models, change terms, make them a bit more complicated, and then apply analysis tools that are standard for the field to get something that is technically correct. But the impact of such technically correct works will be limited unless they open up something new - a novel experimental platform, a way to push the limits of existing theory, and so on.

It is never pleasant for one of your articles to be rejected without review, but it is actually the second best response you can receive! The likely alternative would be for you to wait months before receiving a similar rejection on the basis of anonymous referee reports!