Format Fit Is Not Journal Fit: A Judgment-Infrastructure Failure Mode in AI-Assisted Submission Recommendations

AI systems are increasingly used as decision aids in scholarly workflows, including venue selection and “journal fit” advice. Yet journal fit is not merely a topical or formatting judgement; it is an institutional judgement about admissible contribution types (genre), theoretical anchoring expectations, and editorial culture. This working paper reports a de-identified, trace-based single-episode case in which multiple AI systems converged on a high-probability journal recommendation for a culture/heritage-adjacent AI manuscript, citing topical relevance and article-like surface structure. The subsequent editorial outcome (reported here as a paraphrased summary, not a quotation) rejected the manuscript as failing the venue’s expectations for an admissible journal article genre.