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SeedPublished 2026-10-23

AI in the peer review of economics and finance

Peer review, research productivity and academic writing appear on 56 recent papers across the economics and AI journals, with 17 in the last quarter against about 12 per quarter before, and 17 of them involve language models. Journals report AI-written reviews and AI-written submissions. How much of each is there, and does it change what gets published?

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What prompted this#

Since October 2025, 56 papers carry a peer-review, scientific-writing, research-productivity, academic-writing or scientific-discovery keyword (22 in economics journals, 20 in AI): "peer review" on 19, "research productivity" on 16, "academic writing" on 8, "scientific discovery" on 3. Seventeen of them also carry a language-model, generative-AI or AI keyword. The quarter to September 2026 had 17 such papers against about 12 per quarter earlier.

Questions#

  • What share of referee reports at economics and finance journals since 2023 show the statistical signs of language-model drafting, and do such reports reach different recommendations?
  • Do submissions written with AI assistance get accepted at different rates, and has submission volume risen faster than acceptance?
  • Would AI screening for errors and missing references improve reviews, and would authors and editors accept it?

Data that could help#

Referee report and submission archives from journals that permit research access, AI-text detectors, and editor surveys.

Next step#

Run an AI-text detector on anonymized referee reports from a journal for 2021–2025 and relate flagged reports to their recommendations and length.

The keywords this note follows, in the tracked finance, accounting, economics, management, operations research and AI journals as of 2026-10-26
KeywordPapers, last 30 daysRankPapers per month, Oct 23 – Oct 26*Papers, last 36 months
peer review3#77667
academic writing1#288125
research productivity2#130353

Markdown version of this note: /ideas/ai-in-peer-review.md

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Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). AI in the peer review of economics and finance. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 23, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/ai-in-peer-review

@misc{scholar4ai-ideas-ai-in-peer-review,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {AI in the peer review of economics and finance},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/ai-in-peer-review}},
  urldate = {2026-10-23},
  note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}

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