The Barrier is Purely Financial: Analysis of the Acceptance Rate and Peer Review Practice of Predatory Journals Using AI Generated Papers

Unsolicited emails from predatory journals offer a quick opportunity to produce a first author publication for a fee. With increasing emphasis on first author publications for applications, interviews and jobs, the opportunity associated with such journals may encourage some to produce work that can be both easily published and damaging to the medical field. Predatory journals therefore have an opportunity to publish low quality literature quickly for a profit. To analyse the quality of peer review, cost and acceptance rate of AI generated papers submitted to predatory journals contacting by unsolicited emails. Chat GPT3 along with an AI image generator were used to produce scientific manuscripts that were submitted to 50 consecutive unsolicited emails from predatory journals. Data on response time and outcome were collected. Generation and submission times, along with article processing charges (APC) were analysed. All papers were formally withdrawn. From 50 submitted papers 15 (30