ArXiv modified its coverage after AI instruments made it straightforward to mass-generate survey papers.
Solely peer-reviewed assessment or place papers will now be accepted within the Laptop Science class.
Researchers are divided, with some warning the rule hurts early-career authors whereas others name it essential to cease AI spam.
ArXiv, a free repository based at Cornell College that has develop into the go-to hub for hundreds of scientists and technologists worldwide to publish early analysis papers, will not settle for assessment articles or place papers in its Laptop Science class except they’ve already handed peer assessment at a journal or convention.
The coverage shift, introduced October 31, comes after a “flood” of AI-generated survey papers that moderators describe as “little greater than annotated bibliographies.” The repository now receives a whole lot of those submissions month-to-month, up from a small trickle of high-quality critiques traditionally written by senior researchers.
“Up to now few years, arXiv has been flooded with papers,” an official assertion on the location defined. “Generative AI/giant language fashions have added to this flood by making papers—particularly papers not introducing new analysis outcomes—quick and simple to put in writing.”
The Laptop Science part of @arxiv is now requiring prior peer assessment for Literature Surveys and Place Papers. Particulars in a brand new weblog submit
— Thomas G. Dietterich (@tdietterich) October 31, 2025
“We have been pushed to this choice by a giant enhance in LLM-assisted survey papers,” added Thomas G. Dietterich, an arXiv moderator and former president of the Affiliation for the Development of Synthetic Intelligence, on X. “We do not have the moderator assets to look at these submissions and determine the nice surveys from the unhealthy ones.”
Analysis revealed in Nature Human Behaviour discovered that just about 1 / 4 of all pc science abstracts confirmed proof of huge language mannequin modification by September 2024. A separate examine in Science Advances confirmed that the usage of AI in analysis papers revealed in 2024 skyrocketed because the launch of ChatGPT.
Supply: ArXiv
ArXiv’s volunteer moderators have at all times filtered submissions for scholarly worth and topical relevance, however they do not conduct peer assessment. Evaluation articles and place papers have been by no means formally accepted content material varieties, although moderators made exceptions for work from established researchers or scientific societies. That discretionary system broke below the burden of AI-generated submissions.
The platform now handles a submission quantity that is multiplied a number of instances over lately, with generative AI making it trivially straightforward to supply superficial survey papers.
The response from the analysis group has been combined. Stephen Casper, an AI security researcher, raised issues that the coverage would possibly disproportionately have an effect on early-career researchers and people engaged on ethics and governance subjects.
“Evaluation/place papers are disproportionately written by younger folks, folks with out entry to a lot of compute, and people who find themselves not at establishments which have a lot of publishing expertise,” he wrote in a critique.
Different merely critiqued ArXiv’s stance as unsuitable (and even dumb), with others even supporting the usage of AI to detect AI-generated papers
Thomas, there’s important push again towards arxiv turning into gate keepers, leaning into peer assessment, and ignoring the issue till it will get worse. Have you ever thought-about any of the constructive proposals made by the AI/ML group?
1. Have an unmoderated part of ArXiv (from…
— Justin Angel (@JustinAngel) November 2, 2025
One downside is that AI detection instruments have confirmed unreliable, with excessive false-positive charges that may unfairly flag reliable work. However, a latest examine discovered that researchers didn’t determine one-third of ChatGPT-generated medical abstracts as machine-written. The American Affiliation for Most cancers Analysis reported that lower than 25% of authors disclosed AI use regardless of necessary disclosure insurance policies.
The brand new requirement means authors should submit documentation of profitable peer assessment, together with journal references and DOIs. Workshop critiques will not meet the usual. ArXiv emphasised that the change impacts solely the Laptop Science class for now, although different sections could undertake comparable insurance policies in the event that they face comparable surges in AI-generated submissions.
The transfer displays a broader reckoning in tutorial publishing. Main conferences like CVPR 2025 have carried out insurance policies to desk-reject papers from reviewers flagged for irresponsible conduct. Publishers are grappling with papers that comprise apparent AI tells, like one which started, “Actually, here’s a doable introduction in your matter.”
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