arXiv AI By Jicheng Zhou, Kemou Li, Kahim Wong, Zheyuan Li, Zhuan Shi, Fengpeng Li, Haiwei Wu, Jiantao Zhou

CABAL: Multi-Agent Simulacra for Tracing the Effects of Collusive Bidding in Peer Review

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The paper introduces CABAL, an end-to-end multi-agent simulation framework that models reviewer assignment in academic conferences using large language model-driven reviewer agents. It presents an affinity-guided collusive bidding strategy that forms collusion rings based on reviewer-paper affinities, leading to more effective target-paper capture and higher scores for colluding reviewers. Experiments show that while collusive bidding significantly increases target-paper capture and reviewer scores, overall conference-wide effects are modest, and existing bid-phase detectors offer limited detection capability.

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