We detected a peculiar situation early this morning with one of our journals, which typically shows moderate activity.
Within a span of just two hours, we received 10 distinct articles with clear signs of having been generated by AI. They all share very similar patterns: identical layout, repetitive structure, LLM-style or inconsistent writing, and highly questionable content quality.
The submissions were made by users registered in OJS with an apparently valid ORCID (although it was hidden in all cases). This means they passed both the ORCID registration check and the PKP registration process.
Furthermore, all the articles are co-authored. The first author is the same person (whose ORCID is public), although this does not match the user who registered and submitted the articles on the platform.
We are particularly concerned that this type of submission seems to be becoming increasingly frequent, consuming a considerable amount of editorial time before they can be identified and discarded.
We would like to know how the community is dealing with this problem (“spam-articles”, is taken?).
Some specific questions:
- What is the objective of the person or people making these submissions? No such article would pass the peer-review process, so it seems like a waste of time for both them and the journal.
- What procedures or best practices are you applying to protect yourselves against this new phenomenon of “spam-articles”?
- What specific tools do you use to detect and block fake users or suspicious articles? Is there already a plugin or development to detect anomalous behaviour, such as mass user registrations in short periods of time or submissions?
Any experience or recommendation will be welcome.