ChatGPT Drives 42% Surge in Submissions, Straining Top Management Journal’s Peer Review

OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022, and generative AI quickly lowered the barriers to writing and polishing academic papers. For Organization Science, a leading management journal, the rapid increase in submissions has expanded knowledge production but also burdened editors and reviewers with more low-quality manuscripts, putting pressure on a peer-review system that relies on unpaid expert labor.

Submissions to Organization Science surged 42% after ChatGPT’s launch, prompting the editorial office to expand its staff substantially to handle the influx of manuscripts and reviews. Ethan Mollick, a scholar at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, warned that AI is shifting academic competition toward producing more work rather than improving research quality, pushing the current review system close to its capacity limit.