Autoreject - An Automatic Review Generator

Too many review assignments on your plate? With autoreject, you can produce long and detailed reviews at the touch of a button, simply by filling out a short form. Check it out here!

April 1, 2019 - Andreas Zeller

Frequently Answered Questions

Is this for real?

autoreject.org is an April's fools joke. No reviewer with a clear mind would ever use such a tool, right? Choose form options and enjoy!

Where do these text snippets come from?

The "arguments" in the generator all are inspired by real reviews and arguments I have collected over time. This includes reviews colleagues and I have gotten for papers of ours, co-reviews of papers I reviewed, and discussions in PC meetings. I also follow ShitMyReviewersSay for inspiration.

Why a site like this?

With this site, I hope to raise some attention towards the problem of overly formalistic reviews - that is, "reviews" that take only a very shallow, "syntactical" look into a paper without considering its potential and deeper implications. Plus, it acts as an exercise in rhetorics - namely how to turn any argument into rejection.

Do such formalistic reviews actually exist?

Of course! As a reviewer, you can always make your life easy by pointing at one of the "issues" listed in the autoreject reviews. Ignore the potential of the work, ignore whether it may make some difference or not. Avoid taking a difficult decision and simply go for the first flaw you can find.

Are reviews really this bad?

No. While some reviews may indeed be problematic, by far most reviewers are driven by the honest desire to understand and value the submitted material. If a reviewer rejects your paper for whatever arguments, you should always ask yourself what you could and should have done to improve. A "shallow" review often is a sign that the reviewer was not motivated enough to get deeper, possibly because s/he had a bad day, but more likely because your paper could have done better. Improve and try again.

The form does not really fit to my branch of science.

I am pretty active in the Software Engineering community, and hence the site is pretty much geared towards arguments, methods, and reviews in that community. I'll be happy to include variants specialized for your community - e.g. autoreject.org/medicine, or autoreject.org/history.

What are all the possible outcomes?

Feel free to experiment with the site. If you want to cheat, examine the source code; this is where you can find all snippets and their conditions.

Is there a way to get your paper accepted?

Yes. Two, to be precise.

License

The content of this project itself is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license, and the underlying source code used to format and display that content is licensed under the MIT license.