AI Is Destroying Academic Publishing
As a journal editor, I can say: The currency of academic social capital is collapsing.
Academic publishing is facing a crisis as artificial intelligence (AI) infiltrates every aspect of the process, casting doubt on the integrity of scholarly work. As an associate editor of a bioethics journal, the author has witnessed firsthand the impact of AI on article quality and integrity. With the rise of AI-assisted articles, weak scholarship is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish, as AI-generated prose can appear fluent and well-structured, leading to deceptive acceptance by journals.
The author notes that AI-assisted articles often contain sentences that sound plausible but rarely make sense, and citations that appear appropriate but are based on open-access or highly cited articles. Even peer reviewers, some of whom are senior scholars, are falling prey to AI, with reviews that have an unedited, bot-like quality.
The problem is not limited to the humanities and social sciences, as AI can generate substantial portions of articles in the hard sciences as well. Journals are experiencing a surge in submissions, with some reporting double or even triple the number of submissions since the release of ChatGPT. This influx has led to a strain on the already limited resources of unpaid journal editors, further exacerbating the issue of AI-assisted publications slipping through the cracks.
As AI continues to advance, the academic publishing system is struggling to keep up, with the potential for serious consequences for the credibility and value of academic scholarship.
Written by urgent.news from The Atlantic's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
