Too Much to Review? When Production Outpaces Consumption

ABSTRACT The peer review system has often been characterized as broken. The adoption of generative AI has led to a steep increase in submissions that exposes a structural imbalance beneath it. We argue that this imbalance is not technological in nature, but reflects a deeper misalignment that performativity has brought to scholarly work. We offer a framework of AI‐mediated production and consumption of scholarly work, diagnose the effects of AI on the peer review system, and propose five recommendations to realign the role of human judgment in the process of peer evaluation.