A paper generator is computer software that composes
scholarly paper
Academic publishing is the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in academic journal articles, books or theses. The part of academic written output that is not formally pu ...
s in the style of those that appear in
academic journal
An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and ...
s or
conference proceedings
In academia and librarianship, conference proceedings is a collection of academic papers published in the context of an academic conference or workshop. Conference proceedings typically contain the contributions made by researchers at the conferen ...
. Typically, the generator uses technical
jargon
Jargon is the specialized terminology associated with a particular field or area of activity. Jargon is normally employed in a particular communicative context and may not be well understood outside that context. The context is usually a partic ...
from the field to compose sentences that are grammatically correct and seem erudite but are actually nonsensical. The prose is supported by tables, figures, and references that may be valid in themselves, but are randomly inserted rather than relevant.
Examples include the
Postmodernism Generator
The Postmodernism Generator is a computer program that automatically produces "close imitations" of postmodernist writing. It was written in 1996 by Andrew C. Bulhak of Monash University using the Dada Engine, a system for generating random tex ...
,
snarXiv and
SCIgen
SCIgen is a paper generator that uses context-free grammar to randomly generate nonsense in the form of computer science research papers. Its original data source was a collection of computer science papers downloaded from CiteSeer. All elements ...
.
[ The latter has been used to generate many ]computer science
Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includin ...
papers that were accepted for publication.[
]
See also
* Sokal affair
The Sokal affair, also called the Sokal hoax, was a demonstrative scholarly hoax performed by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University and University College London. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to ''Social Text'', an acade ...
References
{{Reflist
Academic scandals
Humorous hoaxes in science
Literary forgeries
Natural language generation