Reviewer #2 Demands Authors Cite 12 More Papers, All By Reviewer #2

Sources within the I3E TPAMI editorial system have confirmed that Reviewer #2 on manuscript submission TPAMI-2026-04471 has requested twelve additional citations in the revised version, all of which happen to be authored by a researcher with a suspiciously specific publication record that matches, with statistical improbability the reviewer did not acknowledge, the reviewing party themselves. The journal’s editor-in-chief described the situation as “not unusual, per se, though the number twelve is slightly above average.”

The review in question, obtained by this publication through entirely legitimate channels involving a disgruntled editorial assistant and a shared Google Drive folder that someone forgot to restrict, runs to 4,800 words and can be summarized as: “The paper is fine but the related work section neglects a crucial body of scholarship.” The crucial body of scholarship comprises twelve papers published between 2019 and 2025 in outlets ranging from “prestigious but obscure” to “technically peer-reviewed,” all addressing topics adjacent to the submission’s subject matter through a chain of logical inference that the reviewer describes as “obvious” and a third reader described as “a stretch.”

The authors, in their response to reviews, have stated they are “happy to add the suggested citations where appropriate,” a phrase that experts in academic communication recognize as meaning “we will add all of them in a single paragraph at the end of the related work section regardless of relevance, because we need this paper to be accepted.” They further noted that upon reviewing the suggested works, they found one of them to be directly relevant, four to be marginally relevant, three to be tangentially relevant, and four to be papers they are nearly certain they themselves rejected at a different venue last year.

The paper is currently under re-review. Reviewer #2 has submitted a new set of comments requesting that the authors “engage more substantively with the cited works,” specifically by adding a paragraph that “situates the contribution within the broader arc of this research program,” a phrase the authors have been unable to parse despite three independent attempts. The editor has set a response deadline of three weeks, which all parties acknowledge will become six weeks, then three months, then “whenever.”