06.12.2019
Artificial Intelligence, Automation and Peer Review (.pdf)
« This document summarises recent developments in the automation of the editorial and peer review process. It discusses the opportunities for AI to support editors and reviewers, as well as the ethical challenges in terms of the potential to cause bias in the publishing system. It focuses most on the challenges for adopting automated peer review and its potential to cause unintended bias, arguing that any type of artificial intelligence for overall article quality or future impact assessment could generate international biases against authors in non-English speaking countries, including most poorer countries. Essentially, this bias would occur because an AI system would learn features that associate with authors from high impact countries, such as the USA, UK and Australia, as markers of high quality, penalising articles from lower overall impact countries, irrespective of the quality of the submitted articles. (…) »
