Identity Theft in AI Conference Peer Review

Academia heavily relies on trust. This trust-based system, however, creates a significant vulnerability: identity theft. In this Opinion column, we describe newly uncovered cases of identity theft within the scientific peer-review process within the research area of artificial intelligence (AI), involving modus operandi that could also disrupt other academic procedures. We begin by outlining the peer-review process, focusing on scientific conferences since they are the most prominent venues of publication in computer science. Peer review is foundational to scientific inquiry, relying on researchers to voluntarily apply their expertise in evaluating scientific papers.