SCIgen

SCIgen is a program created by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that randomly generates nonsense in the form of computer science research papers, including graphs, diagrams, and citations. The software includes quotes from noted authors, many of them dead for decades. It uses a context-free grammar to form all elements of the papers, and its authors state that their aim is "to maximize amusement, rather than coherence."

Authors cited

Several authors deceased for years are cited having made recent publications. For example, Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin. This would make it easy for a reviewer to note the hoax article, but even so, articles with quotes like this have been accepted in peer reviewed journals.

“

N. WHITE and C. DARWIN, “The relationship between Internet QoS and robots with Knead,” in Proceedings of the Workshop on Bayesian Models, Aug. 2005.

”

“

NEWTON, I. A methodology for the improvement of RPCs. In Proceedings of the Symposium on Low-Energy, Game-Theoretic Epistemologies (Apr. 1990).

”

Nonsense articles accepted in peer-review journals

• A paper titled "Towards the Simulation of E-Commerce" by a fake author, Herbert Schlangemann got accepted as a reviewed paper at the "International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering" (CSSE) and was briefly in the IEEE Xplore Database . The author is named after the Swedish short film Der Schlangemann. Furthermore the author was invited to be a session chair during the conference. The official review comment: "This paper presents cooperative technology and classical Communication. In conclusion, the result shows that though the much-touted amphibious algorithm for the refinement of randomized algorithms is impossible, the well-known client-server algorithm for the analysis of voice-over-IP by Kumar and Raman runs in _(n) time. The authors can clearly identify important features of visualization of DHTs and analyze them insightfully. It is recommended that the authors should develop ideas more cogently, organizes them more logically, and connects them with clear transitions"
• A year later, another paper, titled "PlusPug: A Methodology for the Improvement of Local-Area Networks" got accepted for oral presentation at the "2009 International Conference on e-Business and Information System Security (EBISS 2009)": ". Similar to the CSSE conference, the paper would be published in the Conference Proceedings by the IEEE Press, which would be included in IEEE Xplore and indexed by EI Compendex. In fact this incident has the aggravating to have been selected for oral presentation. with a good review result.

External links

• SCIgen - An Automatic CS Paper Generator
• Schlangemann's blog (the site contains inappropriate images and is referenced only for the purpose of quotation).
• SCIGen at Wikipedia Here you can find other prominent results achieved by the use of the tool.