Who reviews the reviews? When AI encounters academic aesthetics

This paper focuses on the challenges in digital-era peer review. It explains why an overreliance on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in peer review can pose problems beyond legal or ethical compliance. Confronting the hyper-pressure of today’s peer review and research funding systems, moving beyond the debate on whether and how to use AI in peer review, the paper introduces the concept of ‘academic aesthetics’ as an approach to understanding and tackling the challenges posed by digitality and AI.