On Academic Gatekeeping, Conceptual Thinness and Publishing Crap

As preprints increasingly become seen as reliable scholarly sources - particularly in fields such as physics and computer science - the value of having such articles on your CV has also increased.

November 27, 2025

On Academic Gatekeepers, Conceptual Thinness, and Publishing Crap
Your Scholarly Digest 27th November, 2025

Become a member of Scholar Square, our online digital community where we put our ethos into practice - and get access to all editions of The Scholarly Letter for free.

Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up to receive weekly letters rooted in curiosity and connection.
 
Know someone who will enjoy The Scholarly Letter? Forward it to them.

All previous editions of The Letter are available on our website.

Online Thumbnail Credits: National Gallery of Art, Open Access Collection; Credit Line: Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Mary E. Maxwell Fund)

Hi Scholar,

Three days from now - Sunday, 30th of November - will mark the 3rd year since the public release of ChatGPT - and my goodness hasn’t it been a busy three years? Three weeks after its public release, ChatGPT was listed as an author in a peer reviewed journal article. 9 months later an Opinion article titled “So What If ChatGPT Wrote It?” was published. Inevitably, ChatGPT spawned other AI tools promising to relieve the time-starved scholar of every aspect of research, from writing, to reading literature, to critical synthesis. A journal has even been established to publish “AI generated research papers where AI is the first author… showcasing their ability to generate novel insights, formulate hypotheses, conduct experiments, and draw conclusions autonomously.” 

What are we to make of it all, now this particular Pandora's Box has been well and truly opened? One shouldn’t, indeed one can’t, deny the potential of this new technology outright. Yet, we are not concerned with how ChatGPT “does” research any more than we are concerned with how a laptop processes keystrokes or how a pen lays ink on a page. A tool is just a tool. This publication makes a conscious, deliberate choice every week to focus deeply on the human side of scholarship. We concern ourselves with the integrity of the scholar: the craftsman, the artist, the one who takes up the tools. Ultimately, when the dust has finally settled, we will see what was true all along: the qualities of the scholar, not the novelty of their tools, is what truly matters. Judging by the fact that you – and 4,000 other scholars – are reading this right now, it would seem that you agree. To us, that is worth noticing on the 3rd anniversary of this brave new world. 

This Digest is for Paid Subscribers

Become a paid subscriber to read the rest of this Digest and access our full archive. (If you are a member of Scholar Square, our online digital community, you need to explicitly trigger your access. Log in to Scholar Square - instructions on how to get access to The Scholarly Letter are in The Welcome Hall)

Already a paying subscriber? Sign In.

Paid subscribers receive an edition of The Scholarly Letter every Thursday. That's:

  • • Two editions of 🍎The Digest every month
  • • Two editions of 🍏 The Thursday Essay
  • • Plus full access to our entire archive.