Bots Reviewing Bots: What Happens When Publication Becomes Table Stakes

A couple weeks ago, I opened my email inbox to see a flurry of panicked messages from a student. His paper, which he said he had been working on for months, had been rejected within 30 minutes of its submission to a journal, and accompanying that rejection email was a fourteen-paragraph critique peppered with a suspicious number of em-dashes: a classic hallmark of AI-generated content.

Getting a rejection isn’t uncommon when it comes to the pursuit of publication. We support our students to be resilient, to keep improving and keep trying when they face challenges. This particular journal that the student chose to submit to, however, claimed to offer two rounds of reviews by subject matter experts. Our student only received one, and it appeared that it was most likely offered by AI. The twist to the story is that when we went back to take a look at the student’s submitted work, we ran it through a plagiarism detector and saw that it had identified large swathes of the text as AI-generated.

Welcome to the era of bots critiquing and rejecting papers written by bots.

This is a far cry from the publication landscape that existed back in 2019 when we started Polygence. At that time, just a handful of selective journals existed for high school students. The likes of the Concord Review, for example. There were limited places for students to showcase their work, and few students pursuing academic research while still in high school.

Fast forward to 2026, and Academic Research has become a popular enrichment activity. Not just because it’s a great way to build skills that students will actually use in college, like college-level writing, reading for understanding, critical thinking & creative problem solving (skills that are becoming increasingly rare). But also because it’s a great way for students to demonstrate their interest in the fields they’re planning to pursue.

Therein lies the challenge, though. Conducting the research is the skill builder. Persevering through friction is the character builder. But it’s the demonstration that has become the reason to do the work for many students and families. (I’ll get into my thoughts on how this has led to challenges in student use of AI in a later post).

When it comes to the publication landscape though, this focus on demonstration has created a demand for more ways for students to showcase their work. In addition to the increase in popularity of some genuinely rigorous avenues, like science fairs, in particular ISEF - Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, new journals have popped up left and right. Some claim to be ‘peer reviewed’, others regularly charge $300+ dollars in “extra fast-track” fees, happily paid by students who don’t want to wait it out for the more traditional journals.

From a utilitarian perspective, the relentless drive towards publication that we’re seeing stems from the desire for external recognition. Families want external validation and proof that a student’s work is authentic, high quality, and vetted. Once published, the student then includes the actual paper or mentions its published status within their college application to bolster their academic profile. For a while that model seemed to work for everyone. Until it didn’t.

And what are we seeing now? Pop-up journals are folding. One particular now-defunct journal - Journal of Student Research (colloquially known as JSR) - regularly charged $300+ USD in fast-track fees. But then, students found themselves waiting for months. The wait was getting longer and longer. When they closed up shop without warning, they also took down the 2000+ articles that were housed on their website, leading to frustrated families and students on the verge of applying to colleges scrambling to produce evidence that their work was once published online.

Starting a journal to help students showcase their work isn’t always disingenuous or opportunistic. It becomes a problem, though, when the journals stray further and further away from a truly academic mission, and further into the business of, well, business. Peer review rounds become fewer. AI replaces the human giving feedback. Costs are cut, lower quality work gets ‘published’, and ‘publication’ becomes a stamp that, once indicative of work of the highest caliber, now becomes table stakes.

At Polygence, we asked this question earlier than most: Is publication the only way to satisfy even this utilitarian drive? Are there truly no better ways to gain public recognition than publishing your work in journals that might be here today but gone tomorrow?

In the face of a new crop of new research programs that are doubling down on the drive for publication (some even going so far as to start their business using ‘publication assurance’ as a top reason to choose them), we’ve chosen a different approach, one that we’ve been honing and perfecting alongside our students for years.

Polygence stems from the words ‘poly’ (many or multi-faceted) and intelligence. From the beginning, we’ve been inspired by the work of Howard Gardner, and whole heartedly believe that there are many different types of intelligence that students bring to their projects. With that in mind, we’ve always embraced students demonstrating the fruits of their intellectual labor, but have encouraged them to be more open to paths that diverge from the rinse and repeat, sometimes even cookie-cutter approach that other programs take.

We still support students writing research papers. And we’re on the frontlines, constantly evaluating journals and informing students when journals start to signal that they don’t meet our standards.

In addition to that, though, we launched “Showcasing Support Tracks”. Recognizing early that students’ desire to showcase their work is genuine, we’ve built programs to guide students through less common, often more challenging, rewarding (and unique) avenues. Our multimedia track, for example, has guided students toward creating prototypes, policy proposals, impact campaigns, mobile apps, documentaries, podcasts and other forms of original work. Our Science Fair track has helped students prepare for local, state and international competitions.

This fall, we’re launching a new track. One that gets ahead of the crisis that many of the most selective universities are starting to grapple with. In a world where students are using AI to fill out their college applications (and sometimes using AI to complete the extracurriculars they’re featuring on those applications), how do you determine genuine academic ownership?

Stay tuned for our big announcement. In the meantime, I’d love to further the discussion. Where do you think the landscape will go next? If you had asked me that question in 2019, I couldn’t have predicted where we would be today. The pace of change is fast. At Polygence, we’re committed to deep thinking (and first moving).