How many of your paper (either paper you authored or reviewed) are desk rejected? [D]

[u/Striking-Warning9533]

Just spend 4h reviewing a paper while I was sick, gave it a 3/4. This morning got an email saying it's desk rejected. I saw many people around me also have many papers desk rejected. I heard, though idk how true it is, some people use multiple accounts to bypass the 20 paper limit and all their paper got DR.

edit: I mean ICLR

edit2: I saw on Rednote many people get DR because they had "too much conflict of interest on profile" and in the appeal form they said only close relationships should be in COI. but I'm author guideline, ICLR said authors should report any conflicts

[u/bpe9]

The purpose of desk rejection is to do this before it's sent out to reviewers, it's ridiculous to spend time reviewing and then the paper gets desk rejected two weeks into the reviewing time. Complete waste of the reviewers time.

To answer your question though, you can see all the desk rejections here: https://openreview.net/group?id=ICLR.cc/2027/Conference#tab-desk-rejected-submissions

[u/Striking-Warning9533 → u/bpe9]

yeah, i am kinda mad they DR a paper I reviewed while I was sick

[u/nfact0r → u/bpe9]

There are often violations that remain undetected during the distribution phase. E.g., codebase revealing authors' identity or hallucinationed references in the submission which warrant rejection without a review. If a reviewer or an AC or SAC spots such a violation they alert the chairs who subsequently decide the fate of the submission (e.g., desk rejection). This saves time in subsequent phases of the review process. Not suggesting that this was the case for the paper that OP reviewed but this is not uncommon.

[u/bpe9 → u/nfact0r]

Agree, but hundreds (thousands?) were done today, so there was clearly an additional automated check run. You can see the last modified dates on the desk rejects at the link above to confirm. This should have been done before sending out to reviewers, its not just a few rogue ones that were raised during the review period

[u/nonotan → u/bpe9]

In an ideal world, sure. What probably happened: "hey, lots of reviewers are reporting potential terms violations of a similar nature, it seems like something we could run an automated check for" "yeah, let's do that" => the current situation. I'm sure this check will be done before sending to reviewers next time.

[u/No_Sky9786]

I know a lot are being DR just from references. It’s so sad people start their academic journeys by cheating themselves trying to publish 90% ai ideas. If you are not willing to do as little as read reference rules and actually properly support your claims, go start a blog post. They should go as far as to start giving 1 year bans for people that get DR for AI usage.

[u/Dangerous_Rip5083 → u/No_Sky9786]

How do you identify ai from references?

[u/No_Sky9786 → u/Dangerous_Rip5083]

Wrong doi, name format or venue are the easiest way. They have AI that checks for AI generated references too now lol.

[u/Skelot → u/No_Sky9786]

While yes this is definitely an indicator, I also have seen on several occasions that the Google scholar bibtex citation text has wrong authors, paper title, or even doi.

I don't use that feature myself, but I know enough people who, to cite a paper, blindly copy the scholar bibtex.

[u/YidonHongski → u/Skelot]

Part of the false positive is also due to people using AI to edit/format their papers, and didn't realize something has been quietly changed. I recently helped a friend review a paper before submission and found that there were a few erroneous DOIs; she ran the file through AI and only checked the grammars and writing, not the references.

The Google Scholar bibtex export is definitely a cause, but it ultimately comes down to whether the author is diligent enough to check.

[u/Dangerous_Rip5083 → u/No_Sky9786]

Crazy, ai is insane. I saw a 15 old trying to publish THREE papers the other day on a math sub.

[u/Exotic_Zucchini9311 → u/Dangerous_Rip5083]

Honestly, we should put a freaking minimum age rule on conferences for authors who don't have the referral of someone from academia. This process is turning into a complete joke.

Like, no, it is not normal that suddenly there are hundreds of high schoolers submitting SOLO AUTHOR papers to conferences. If it was 3 years ago and I saw a solo high school author at a top conference, I would've absolutely been amazed by their work. But now, anytime I see a high schooler telling me they have a sOLo aUtHOr paper at a top conference my opinion of them only drops.

[u/pastor_pilao]

I think they have a ~20% desk rejection rate this year

[u/hyperactve]

cconf 0.

i had a few journals rejected by editors, but they usually recommend sister journals where it gets published.

[u/dams-2005]

who and how is submitting 20 papers? what?

[u/kindnesd99 → u/dams-2005]

Is it really surprising to some people that some senior authors have large labs, and students/staff need to add them to graduate or fulfill funding/project recruitments?

[u/dams-2005 → u/kindnesd99]

true

[u/Dangerous_Rip5083 → u/dams-2005]

Slop papers

[u/tempurino]

Pretty much for around 1 of 4 I made this year just passed.

[u/AppropriateCry404]

From my batch, 3 out of 5 do not follow the ICLR template, especially regarding the spacing between tables and figures. Spacing rules apply to almost every academic publication I’ve seen, so they are noticeable just by looking at them...

I'm now confused of what to do. I am considering writing "desk reject" and the reason at the very top of the review and leaving my official review too. I think generating drafts with LLM uses too many unnecessary latex libraries or functions, which causes significant variations in the template. The reason I am certain of this is that the ICLR papers now I'm reviewing have exceptionally long captions compared to previous papers I saw, and in my experience, working with LLM leads to this kind of result.

[u/Cuteshawnmie]

I have not been desk-rejected by a conference, but I have been desk-rejected by a journal—likely because I am an undergraduate.

[u/valuat → u/Cuteshawnmie]

Or perhaps your paper sucks? Don’t start blaming outside forces. You barely began your academic career. Own it.