Don’t Build a Better Fax Machine: A Commentary on “Fighting Fire with Fire: Infusing AI into Peer Review to Sustain Quality Scholarship”

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being proposed as a tool to improve the efficiency of academic peer review. While such applications may alleviate reviewer shortages and enhance productivity, they largely preserve the existing architecture of scientific publishing. In this commentary I propose that AI also creates an opportunity to reimagine more fundamental aspects of how knowledge is evaluated and disseminated. Drawing on concepts from operations management and innovation, I propose disruptive alternatives that challenge the underlying design of the current process. Rather than simply helping referees review papers faster, AI may enable new models of scientific communication that are more open, timely, and adaptive to the needs of modern scholarship. This commentary was accepted by Christoph Loch.