SCIgen
| Written in | Perl |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Type | Parody generator |
| License | GNU General Public License |
| Website | http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/ |
SCIgen is a computer program that uses context-free grammar to randomly generate nonsense in the form of computer science research papers. All elements of the papers are formed, including graphs, diagrams, and citations. Created by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, its stated aim is "to maximize amusement, rather than coherence."
Opening abstract of Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy:
Many physicists would agree that, had it not been for congestion control, the evaluation of web browsers might never have occurred. In fact, few hackers worldwide would disagree with the essential unification of voice-over-IP and public/private key pair. In order to solve this riddle, we confirm that SMPs can be made stochastic, cacheable, and interposable.
In 2005 a paper generated by SCIgen, Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy, was accepted as a non-reviewed paper to the 2005 World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI) and the authors were invited to speak. The authors of SCIgen described their hoax on their website, and it soon received great publicity when picked up by Slashdot. WMSCI withdrew their invitation, but the SCIgen team went anyway, renting space in the hotel separately from the conference and delivering a series of randomly generated talks on their own "track." The organizer of these WMSCI conferences is Professor Nagib Callaos. From 2000 until 2005, the WMSCI was also sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The IEEE stopped granting sponsorship to Callaos from 2006 to 2008.
Submitting the paper was a deliberate attempt to embarrass WMSCI, which the authors claim accepts low-quality papers and sends unsolicited requests for submissions in bulk to academics. As the SCIgen website states:
One useful purpose for such a program is to auto-generate submissions to conferences that you suspect might have very low submission standards. A prime example, which you may recognize from spam in your inbox, is SCI/IIIS and its dozens of co-located conferences (check out the very broad conference description on the WMSCI 2005 website).
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