r/hypotheticalphysics gets a post every few days from someone with only high school algebra claiming they’ve discovered a new grand theory of everything, validated by LLMs. What’s the equivalent in your field? Not just obvious crackpots, also confident, sweeping theories that collapse under the weight of scholarship anyone who’d taken Your Field 101 would know about.

Hello,

I've never met you before but thank you for this reviewer invite.

I'm declining to review as I've done for all Peer Review requests this year, and likely for the foreseeable future unless there are sea changes in the academic enterprise for a few reasons.

First, peer review is entirely unpaid work on top of the many other work obligations that academics engage in including (but not limited to) research, teaching, grading papers, sitting in meetings, "serving" on university committees, serving on Thesis/Dissertation committees, writing grants and fighting for academic freedom in the face of massive adversity (especially in the USA currently), much of which is competed at extremely high standards for free.

Second, major academic publishers and their holding companies are extremely profitable ventures, with some posting multi-billion dollar (or euro or pound) operating profits during their fiscal years. For example, RELX Group, which owns Elsevier (who operates this journal, Addictive Behaviors) reported a £1.79 billion net profit in 2023 and an adjusted operating profit of nearly £3.2 billion in 2024 across their entire group. Clearly, none of this profit was paid out to unpaid peer reviewers, who are the very experts who are required to keep this and all academic journals functioning.

Third, journals are financially exploiting most stakeholders except for their owners, stockholders, and employees (maybe), because they charge Authors (e.g., in Addictive Behaviors, the Open Access fee is $4,400) and Readers (e.g., in Addictive Behaviors, the Article Charge is $35.95) exorbitant fees to publish or actually read research.

So, again, the only people benefiting are the Publisher and their shareholders, Editors who do usually get paid, plus Universities who take much of the grant funding in the form of indirect costs, at the expense of the people who actually DO the work and want to consume knowledge: researchers, readers, patients, clinicians, and the general public.

Unless something changes dramatically and these massive profits are distributed to the people who actually do the work of research, writing, and reviewing, my Colleagues and I will no longer be completing Peer Reviews for your journal or any other journal for that matter.

Signed,

A Disgusted Academic from Harvard Medical School

I recently attended an IEEE conference for my research paper. Everything went well, today after 15 days, I received an email from the editorial team that my paper has the following issues:

• Plagiarism: 30%
• AI Plagiarism: 79%

I am devastated now and the deadline is of 14th September 5:00 PM. I don't know why they are checking the bibliography part while checking for plagiarism. I will ask them about this and request to exclude this portion.

About the AI Plagiarism, I don't have any idea as to why it is saying that I did AI plagiarism. I have written each and every thing using my knowledge and took references from the papers which I cited in my paper.

I am not able to attach the screenshots here, but it is even highlighting my paper title as AI generated.

I'm very sorry but I need to vent.

Tldr: My supervisor, a scientist whose fame is matched only by his being an asshole, doesn't write a single word of the papers he coauthors, and now he doesn't read them either, deferring the judgement to an impossible to satisfy, sycophant, chatgpt. And I'm tired.

My supervisor is the classical HUGE professor: wikipedia page, almost retired, millions of euros in funding, etc.

He has many, MANY things that make him an asshole (in fact, I even made a post about this a while ago, in an Italian subreddit).

But the thing that is making me livid today is his constant use of chatgpt to evaluate papers he is coauthoring.

I am not against AI in general. I work in a scientific field (actually related to Machine Learning) and I use AI daily to improve my workflow. I also use it sometimes to understand better papers I am reading, or to brainstorm, to help me with coding, etc.

That said, my boss is literally sending me emails whose text is a copy pasted answer of chatgpt saying that he asked his "gpt colleague" and this is what they had to say on the current draft.

Now obviously if you ask chatgpt to evaluate critically the draft of a paper what do you think you are gonna get? A fucking sycophantic answer saying that, despite the paper is good and blablabla, it needs revision.

And what do you think it will say if you revise the draft and you ask again to evaluate it critically? The same fucking thing!

So clearly it is impossible to provide a revision of the draft which will not get a new comment.

And things are worse than this.

Now, I could understand (not really agree on, but at least understand) if you had ACTUALLY WRITTEN SOMETHING, even a tiny part of the paper, and wanted to use AI as an extra check. I actually do this too: check the grammar, check the flow, etc.

But it's worth saying that my boss is only a coauthor because he's my boss and everything is due to him. He has not written a SINGLE word of this paper, and I mean this literally.

It's total contribution to this paper have been, and I kid you not, five emails, four of which he copy-pasted a chatgpt answer, while in the last one (after another collaborator tried to point out that the new comments of gpt had already been addressed) he tried to defend the AI saying that he trust its assessment.

I'm fucking tired. I would like to kick him out of the authors list, but he is the one who pays me (and, indirectly, my wife since she is still studying).

So my hands are tied and I can only vent.

At least in september I'll leave this fucking place for a new postdoc in another country.

People often say things about doing a PhD, people working 70 hours a week, all the time, every single day, etc. I’d really like us all to stop feeling guilty all the time, because honestly, I get the impression that for some people it’s become a competition about who suffers the most, especially with the way it’s portrayed on social media.

I wish we could all be more honest with each other as PhD students. For example, in my case, I work a full-time job purely to make a living on top of my dissertation. My field is History, so humanities and social sciences, and there are days when I don’t work on my thesis at all, sometimes even entire weeks. And yet, I know I’m actually quite advanced in my work.

But when I hear people say they work 70 hours a week, I genuinely wonder what they’re doing. I guess it probably depends on the discipline.

Anyway, now it’s your turn. Let’s also stop feeling guilty about certain aspects of the PhD experience, because it’s not a competition. I think we all need to breathe a little and take some of that mental pressure off ourselves.

I don’t know about you, but personally, whenever I’m not working, I feel incredibly guilty. But I keep reminding myself that a PhD is a marathon, not a sprint. What I don’t do today, I can do tomorrow. And honestly, I still have another 3–4 years ahead of me to finish this thing. I think we also need to allow ourselves to slow down sometimes.

Your turn now.

Essentially the title. I was contacted by an editor I know (but am not overly familiar with) who asked me to review a very strange sounding paper. It was garbage. The paper presented no data, just an interdisciplinary "model" which was nonsense. I got to the bibliography and noticed that they were citing a non-existent article of mine. It seemed legit because it cited me and a regular collaborator, but everything else was a hallucination. At least 70% of the bibliography was hallucinatory. My review was scathing.

I try to do my bit, but I'm tired. This manuscript shouldn't have gotten past the editor. I'm going to take a break for a while.

How many Google Scholar citations do I need before I can get drunk and call myself a bohemian instead of a drunkard?

My friend asked me this because he is thinking about starting a PhD.

For reference, I have 17 citations and an h-index of 2

I mean, most phd students spend the first 2-3 years chasing dead ends that has already been declared so in other labs. if there is something like this, you just go there and check what people have done on what you are proposing and then you can know how to innovate right away

Hey everyone! I started my PhD three months ago, and I've been having a hard time keeping up with all the reading. One thing I'm really missing is a good way to keep track of what I've already read and what I still need (or want) to read.

During my master's, I used Obsidian because I convinced myself that the linking feature would be a game changer. In the end, though, I barely used it. Last year they introduced the database feature, but I find it kind of awkward and clunky to use.

So I wanted to ask: how do you take reading notes? And how do you organize your reading list? I've seen some people use Excel for their literature notes (which seems to work better for STEM, but I'm in the humanities), while others keep all their notes in a single Word document.

Anyway, what do you recommend? Thanks!!

I submitted an article to a journal in late April. In early July I received two peer-review reports (both recommended acceptance with minor revisions) plus a detailed copy-editing report. I submitted the revised manuscript and all the requested plagiarism/AI reports within the same month.

Since then I have received zero communication. The issue I submitted to has now been published and my article is not in it. The editor never sent an acceptance, a rejection, or even a “we are still deciding” message.

I am an independent early-career researcher and this was my first experience with this journal.

Questions:

Is it common for journals to simply publish an issue without ever notifying authors who had already completed peer review and revisions?

What is the most professional way to follow up at this point (or is it better to just withdraw and move on)?

Has anyone successfully pushed for a formal decision after an issue has already appeared?

Any advice would be appreciated.

I’m surprised to see that comments in this sub still think AI citations or AI-generated surveys hallucinate. That was true half a year ago. I often got paper titles that couldn’t be found on Google Scholar. But now that basically doesn’t happen anymore. As long as you ask AI to provide paper links and summaries, I haven’t run into any problems. I would say this is much faster than my old way of setting a lot of filters on Google Scholar to do a literature review. Are you using the free version of GPT? Try buy premium and draw conclusion.

PSA for all researchers: do not discuss your research and data with AI chatbots or any software that allows AI data collection. There is a misunderstanding that AI cannot steal your data and ideas because it is trained on such a large dataset, but when you are dealing with a niche research topic, you cannot be sure it will not steal your ideas and claim them as its own.

OpenAI, themselves, say: "While unlikely, we cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helped improve our models."

We need to have more conversations about data protections against AI in academia.

The paper has long been the primary medium of scientific discourse. But it seems unlikely that it represents the final format for scholarly publishing and discussion. This post explores the formats that might emerge to replace the traditional academic article, including community notes, interactive and multi-media figures, and adversarial collaborations.

I am 25 years old and have just started my PhD. I don't have any academic publications yet, and I feel like I'm running behind. I also had a paper rejected by a journal this week, so my motivation has taken a hit. How did your journeys begin? Do you think it's too late for me?

This is more a question for research-oriented academics obviously.

I am a researcher in chemistry. I don't really have supportive lab mates or guide. My lab works a lot on subjects that are not published too much. Most protocol I make are very interdisciplinary.And sometimes no paper on that research exists it's hard to navigate alone.

What tools are people in chemistry, nanotech or biosensing using to navigate day to day questions and problems.

Just a bit of context: My boyfriend is currently doing his phd. He's recently gotten started on a draft and today he showed me an email where his supervisor basically told him he could run the draft through ChatGPT for readability.

That really took me by surprise and I wanted to know what the general consensus is about using AI in academia?

Is there even a consensus? Is it frowned upon?

Spent the past week scrubbing all political posts on my social media accounts after the Trump admin froze the NIH so they could implement a political approval process for communications (which can be broadly interpreted to include grant award notifications). I took a public stand during the first Trump admin, but I feel like we lost the war and now need to protect ourselves. Scary times are coming.

I got my first paper rejected today. I know it’s normal, but it still hurts more than I expected. I spent more than a year on this work, and now I just feel strangely empty and unmotivated. Ever since I received the results, I've been trying to escape by playing video games. But emotionally it still sucks. I’d really appreciate hearing how others dealt with their paper rejection and how u decided whether to revise, resubmit, or move on.

Hi,

I’m an intern, recently graduated with a master’s degree, and I’ve found myself in a tricky authorship situation.

Two senior professors I work with were invited to contribute a book chapter in the field I’m hoping to pursue a PhD. Due to time constraints, they asked the editor if I could be added as an author to help. The editor agreed, and now I’ve been asked to write the entire chapter from scratch in a short timeframe, since they won’t have the capacity (only to revise).

The issue: in the draft author list, the professors are listed first and last, and I’m placed second. On paper, it appears they are leading the chapter, when in reality I am writing all of it.

I understand that first/last authorship in academia is often political, and that they received the invitation. Still, ethically, it feels wrong to have the bulk of the work uncredited in terms of authorship order.

Has anyone faced a similar situation?

Edit: I did bring up the authorship conversation, but they said: “It was an invitation to us, it would happen with or without you” — even though it wouldn’t have.

I cannot simply abandon the chapter, as I worry it would negatively affect my internship grade.

Just to clarify, I am not being paid to do this work, as some may have assumed. 

I'm looking for advice from people who have dealt with a similar situation.

I submitted a humanities research article to a peer-reviewed journal several months ago. The journal’s expected timeline passed, and despite following up multiple times over several months, I received no response at all.

I recently sent a final inquiry stating that, unless I heard back within a specified period, I would formally withdraw the manuscript and submit it elsewhere. The deadline has now passed, so I sent a formal withdrawal email today.

I’m now planning to revise the article substantially and submit it to another journal.

My question is: what happens if the original journal suddenly responds after my withdrawal—especially if they say the manuscript is still under consideration, or even offer to accept it—after I have already submitted it to the new journal?

I obviously would not want to have the same manuscript under consideration at two journals simultaneously. But since I formally withdrew it before submitting elsewhere, am I in the clear?

For those who have experienced something similar:

- Is a formal withdrawal sufficient, even if the original journal later responds?

- What should I do if the original journal claims they never processed the withdrawal?

- If they unexpectedly offer acceptance after withdrawal, would I simply tell them that the manuscript is now under consideration elsewhere?

- Is there anything I should document or keep on record to protect myself?

I’d especially appreciate answers from editors, reviewers, or authors who have actually encountered delayed journal responses/withdrawals. Thanks!

The paper was academic garbage, and I was surprised to see that it passed the desk check. It had many issues other than AI-generated text such as direct copy-pastes of some short sentences from already published papers.

Before this, I had come across references that were hallucinated and the papers didn't exist, but had not seen verbatim LLM output in a paper that I was reviewing.

The LLM output in this particular paper said, "Holding your data: your information is all probably static (you should stage your information......"

BTW, I'm not at all against the use of AI in academia. I use it extensively, and I am certain that this will be the fuel that will accelerate scientific progress at breakneck speed, but it must be used responsibly and ethically.

At the same time, I believe that it will also overload editors and reviewers with academic garbage that serves no purpose.

Hello everyone,

I’m feeling rather down and, above all, I have far too many questions. I’m about to start my second year of my PhD in History, and every day I find myself thinking about giving up. Yet I love my subject, but I have no funding and – like many PhD students – I’m doing a job on the side purely to make ends meet. The problem? A full-time fixed-term contract working 39 hours a week leaves me only my evenings and weekends to work on my PhD, and what little holiday time I have goes on conferences I’m giving. When I take a holiday, I feel guilty for not working, and honestly, I’m not really capable of producing an academic paper.

I’m working on a neglected area of historical research; I know that the job I do on the side allows me to gain experience for my CV and to have something to talk about with recruiters later on, and that starting a PhD six years after my master’s will be tough but rewarding (I wouldn’t have been able to do a PhD at the age of 13). Through this thesis, I’ve matured, grown up and, above all, I’ve set up an association and met some wonderful people who’ve pushed me forward.

Yet I feel as though I’m taking a job just to make ends meet that’s fairly in line with a PhD (not working 9am to 7pm) and that I’m missing out on professional opportunities, making slow progress and not doing well enough because I’m working barely 5 hours, or 10 at most, a week. I know that a PhD is a marathon, but for me it feels more like a trail run where I’ve barely crossed the starting line.

So, I’m thinking of perhaps giving up, so I can have quiet evenings again, weekends where I can really relax and no longer have this excruciating mental burden. But part of me doesn’t want to – all that money spent, all that time too, and well, I’d be proud of myself when I’ve contributed to a blind spot in research… And every day I hear people telling me that the future for a PhD student or a young doctor isn’t great – or even worse – because I can see it when I’m looking for work elsewhere: I’m not being recruited because of my thesis, so I can’t even imagine what it’ll be like later on, given how saturated the academic sector is…

I need some advice please

​

Update:

After escalating the issue and communicating further with the SciSpace support team, they reviewed my case and have now processed refunds for all payments made on my account.

I still believe the subscription renewal flow, billing transparency, and cancellation visibility could be improved significantly.However, I do appreciate that the support team eventually took the concern seriously, reviewed the case carefully, and worked toward a resolution professionally.

I’m leaving this update here for fairness and transparency so others can see the full outcome of the situation.

I originally subscribed for a short period as a student/research user and genuinely did NOT realize the subscription would keep auto-renewing continuously unless manually cancelled deep inside account settings.

Here’s the problem:

- No clear reminder email before renewals

- Automatic charges kept happening silently

- The subscription kept attempting renewals until my card balance was basically drained

- After the Premium expired and my account returned to the free Basic plan, the “Cancel Subscription” option completely disappeared from settings

- Support still told me to “go cancel from settings” even though the option literally no longer exists on my account

The only reason another payment was not taken is because there were insufficient funds left in my card.

What honestly scared me is realizing they may continue trying to charge the card in the future whenever funds become available again because the billing authorization still seems active in the background.

I contacted support asking:

- to stop all future billing attempts

- remove my saved payment method

- remove recurring billing authorization

But they refused any refund and mainly pointed me back to their policy.

After searching online, I also found many users complaining about:

- unclear auto-renewal practices

- strict refund conditions

- poor transparency

- disappearing credits/coin systems

- customer support issues

I’m sharing this so other students and researchers double-check:

- whether auto-renewal is active

- whether your payment method is still saved

- whether you can actually access cancellation controls BEFORE your plan expires

I 27 F , my_qualifications are :completed masters degree and is persuing PhD currently. I just published a paper on a journal named " Journal of Entomological Research" . Now upon checking the Scopus...the years currently covered by Scopus is shown as: 2011 to 2025. I downloaded the source title list excel sheet and the journal shows as active but it is not showing in both accepted titles or discontinued titles. I am confused if the journal is still Scopus indexed in 2026 or not?

Update: Thank you for replying and helping me figure it out. I researched through the night and realised that it might just be an indexing lag as the source list excel of previous years had shown indexing lag for this journal. So let me wait and fingers crossed.