Scholarly Publishing

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT or Large Language Models in research publications is expanding rapidly. COPE joins organisations, such as WAME and the JAMA Network among others, to state that AI tools cannot be listed as an author of a paper.

In late 2022, Open AI introduced ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot that could answer questions quite eloquently. The scholarly community was concerned how this would affect the publishing landscape. Several questions arose, such as can a chatbot be an author on an article? How do we acknowledge artificial intelligence in work? The CSE Editorial Policy Committee and CSE members came together to propose advice for the community.

These policies were initially triggered by the rise of generative AI* and AI-assisted technologies, which were expected to increasingly be used by researchers and have now been updated to reflect evolving good practice. These policies aim to provide greater transparency and guidance to authors, reviewers, editors, readers and contributors. Elsevier will continue to monitor developments in this area and will adjust or refine policies as appropriate.

From the STM Association, the paper looks at the ethical, legal, and practical aspects of GenAI, highlighting its potential to transform scholarly communications, and covers a range of topics from intellectual property rights to the challenges of maintaining integrity in the digital age. The paper provides best-practice principles and recommendations for authors, editorial teams, reviewers, and vendors, ensuring a responsible and ethical approach to the use of GenAI tools.

The PNAS journals have recently updated their authorship and editorial policies for PNAS and PNAS Nexus to address the use of generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, in producing research reports. In response to user-supplied questions or prompts, ChatGPT can generate a wide range of materials through its use of a massive language model fed by extensive web-scraped data. Use of AI tools for research reports raises questions about authorship and transparency.

Large language models (LLMs) or Generative AI offer opportunities for acceleration in research and its dissemination. While these opportunities can be transformative, they are unable to replicate human creative and critical thinking. Sage’s policy on the use of AI technology has been developed to assist authors, reviewers and editors to make good judgements about the ethical use of such technology.

This statement revises our earlier “WAME Recommendations on ChatGPT and Chatbots in Relation to Scholarly Publications” (January 20, 2023). The revision reflects the proliferation of chatbots and their expanding use in scholarly publishing over the last few months, as well as emerging concerns regarding lack of authenticity of content when using chatbots. These Recommendations are intended to inform editors and help them develop policies for the use of chatbots in papers published in their journals. They aim to help authors and reviewers understand how best to attribute the use of chatbots in their work, and to address the need for all journal editors to have access to manuscript screening tools. In this rapidly evolving field, we will continue to modify these recommendations as the software and its applications develop.