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Does ChatGPT Ignore Article Retractions and Other Reliability Concerns?

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Mike Thelwall, Marianna Lehtisaari, Irini Katsirea, Kim Holmberg, Er-Te Zheng

Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT seem to be increasingly used for information seeking and analysis, including to support academic literature reviews. To test whether the results might sometimes include retracted research, we identified 217 retracted or otherwise concerning academic studies with high altmetric scores and asked ChatGPT 4o-mini to evaluate their quality 30 times each.

Surprisingly, none of its 6510 reports mentioned that the articles were retracted or had relevant errors, and it gave 190 relatively high scores (world leading, internationally excellent, or close). The 27 articles with the lowest scores were mostly accused of being weak, although the topic (but not the article) was described as controversial in five cases (e.g., about hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19).

In a follow-up investigation, 61 claims were extracted from retracted articles from the set, and ChatGPT 4o-mini was asked 10 times whether each was true. It gave a definitive yes or a positive response two-thirds of the time, including for at least one statement that had been shown to be false over a decade ago.

The results therefore emphasise, from an academic knowledge perspective, the importance of verifying information from LLMs when using them for information seeking or analysis.

URL : Does ChatGPT Ignore Article Retractions and Other Reliability Concerns?

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.2018

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Research data management services in academic libraries to support the research data life cycle: A systematic review

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Richard Cheng Yong Ho, Suei Nee Wong, Patsy Chia, Chris Tang, Magdeline Tao Tao Ng

Academic libraries play an increasingly crucial role in providing services, information, education, and infrastructure support related to research data management (RDM). This systematic review aims to provide a comprehensive and critical analysis of the state of RDM services offered by academic libraries worldwide.

Utilizing the systematic review methodology, the paper examines 89 empirical studies to answer four research questions: (1) the types of RDM services implemented by academic libraries; (2) what are the infrastructure, workflow, and resources used to support these services; (3) what are the reasons for implementing these RDM services; and (4) the effectiveness of these RDM services in supporting the research data life cycle, if any.

This review highlights the critical reasons academic libraries provide RDM services and how they implemented these services through partnerships, infrastructure, and systems, and adapting to new workflows within the library.

These findings also examine the balance between institutional contexts, researchers’ needs, and library resources required to provide these RDM services. By investigating these questions, the results will provide recommendations and guidance for academic libraries interested in implementing RDM services in their own library and institutional contexts.

URL : Research data management services in academic libraries to support the research data life cycle: A systematic review

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.70008

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How do women and men differ in research collaborations based on authorship positions? The Spanish case

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Fernanda Morillo, Manuel Escabias, Zaida Chinchilla-Rodríguez

This study examines gender disparities in authorship and collaboration within the Spanish scientific workforce, focusing on international and industry co-authored publications. Drawing on a comprehensive dataset of over 165,000 publications and more than 170,000 identified authors affiliated with Spanish institutions, the analysis explores how gender interacts with authorship position, research field, career stage, and team size.

The results reveal a consistent under-representation of women in both types of collaboration, particularly in key authorship roles (first, last, and corresponding author). While women are more active at early career stages, their visibility in leadership roles tends to diminish over time, especially as the number of co-authors increases. Field-specific patterns show that even in highly feminized disciplines, such as Biomedical & Health Sciences, women are less likely to appear in prominent authorship positions.

These findings raise important concerns about current research assessment practices that rely heavily on byline position as a proxy for contribution or leadership. The study contributes to ongoing discussions on responsible metrics and proposes policy recommendations to promote more equitable evaluation systems that reflect the collaborative and diverse nature of research careers.

URL : How do women and men differ in research collaborations based on authorship positions? The Spanish case

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2025.1631931

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Scholarly Publications: Criteria, Types, and Recognition From the Researchers’ Perspective

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Christian Kaier, Lisa Schilhan, Lisa Schilhan, Hilmar Brohmer

Based on a survey, this study investigates the perceptions of researchers in Austria concerning scholarly publications, exploring criteria, types, and emerging types of publication and their future recognition. The findings reveal that researchers value a diverse set of criteria, with content-related factors prioritised over formal ones. While traditional publication types remain dominant, novel forms, such as data publications and replication studies, are gaining recognition.

Researchers (n = 616) express a desire for broader recognition of diverse types of work, particularly data publications, teaching materials, and software or code. The findings also exhibit the predominantly research-to-research focus of scholarly communication, with limited emphasis on science-to-public engagement. An analysis of career stages shows that pre-doctoral and post-doctoral researchers tend to be more open-minded than professors regarding the future recognition of some novel types of publication.

There are evident differences between disciplines, highlighting the need for a nuanced, subject-specific approach to evaluation and documentation. Overall, the survey results call for greater consideration of novel publication types in research assessment and documentation. Accordingly, libraries should enhance their research support services to assist in the publication, documentation, and archiving of additional types of publication.

URL : Scholarly Publications: Criteria, Types, and Recognition From the Researchers’ Perspective

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.2019

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Inequity, precarity, and disparity: Exploring systemic and institutional barriers in open access publishing

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Philips Ayeni, Vincent Larivière

Despite increasing advocacy for open access (OA), its uptake in some disciplines has remained low. Existing studies have linked the low uptake of OA in the humanities and social sciences (HSS) to disciplinary norms, limited funding for article processing charges (APCs), and researchers’ preferences.

However, there is a growing concern about inequity in the scholarly communication landscape, as OA publishing has remained unaffordable to many researchers. This study investigates systemic and institutional barriers to OA publishing in Canada, as well as strategies for improving the uptake of and equity in OA publishing.

Using semi-structured interviews, qualitative data was collected from 20 professors from the HSS disciplines of research-intensive universities in the country. Data was analyzed using the NVivo software, following the reflexive thematic analysis approach.

Findings revealed five systemic and institutional barriers to OA publishing: (1) unaffordable APCs; (2) precarious career stage and tenure requirements; (3) unequal privileges; (4) gender; and (5) conflicting and unsupportive institutional OA policies.

We conclude that there needs to be a concerted effort in promoting and funding viable and sustainable OA models, which removes the financial burden of OA publishing from researchers.

There is also an increasing need to promote OA culture within academia and provide institutional support for OA publishing. Notably, the model of academic scholarship that places prominence on journal metrics for tenure and promotion needs to be reformed. Some recommendations for reducing systemic and institutional barriers to OA publishing are provided.

URL : Inequity, precarity, and disparity: Exploring systemic and institutional barriers in open access publishing

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1177/09610006251353385

 

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A retrospective analysis of 400 publications reveals patterns of irreproducibility across an entire life sciences research field

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Joseph Lemaitre, Désirée Popelka, Blandine Ribotta, Hannah Westlake, Sveta Chakrabarti, Li Xiaoxue, Mark A. Hanson, Haobo Jiang, Francesca Di Cara, Estee Kurant, Fabrice David, Bruno Lemaitre

The ReproSci project retrospectively analyzed the reproducibility of 1006 claims from 400 papers published between 1959 and 2011 in the field of Drosophila immunity. This project attempts to provide a comprehensive assessment, 14 years later, of the replicability of nearly all publications across an entire scientific community in experimental life sciences.

We found that 61% of claims were verified, while only 7% were directly challenged (not reproducible), a replicability rate higher than previous assessments. Notably, 24% of claims had never been independently tested and remain unchallenged.

We performed experimental validations of a selection of 45 unchallenged claim, that revealed that a significant fraction (38/45) of them is in fact non-reproducible. We also found that high-impact journals and top-ranked institutions are more likely to publish challenged claims.

In line with the reproducibility crisis narrative, the rates of both challenged and unchallenged claims increased over time, especially as the field gained popularity. We characterized the uneven distribution of irreproducibility among first and last authors.

Surprisingly, irreproducibility rates were similar between PhD students and postdocs, and did not decrease with experience or publication count. However, group leaders, who had prior experience as first authors in another Drosophila immunity team, had lower irreproducibility rates, underscoring the importance of early-career training.

Finally, authors with a more exploratory, short-term engagement with the field exhibited slightly higher rates of challenged claims and a markedly higher proportion of unchallenged ones. This systematic, field-wide retrospective study offers meaningful insights into the ongoing discussion on reproducibility in experimental life sciences.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.07.07.663460

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Open Access and Citation Impact: Modality, Funding, Publisher, and Disciplinary Trends at the University of Kentucky

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Ben Rawlins, Mitchell Scott

As publishers and libraries attempt to align business models and collection strategies to an everincreasing open access (OA) publishing landscape, both have found that the message of open access citation advantage (OACA) resonates with current and prospective authors. Despite its widespread promotion and acceptance, however, OACA is not universal and is subject to ongoing debate.

This quantitative study contributes to the OACA debate and research with a longitudinal focus on citation data from journal articles published 2018–2021 by University of Kentucky-affiliated authors.

The article and citation data for University of Kentucky-affiliated authors are supplemented with University of Kentucky College and departmental data, providing valuable local context. In addition to author-level departmental data, this study also considers traditional confounding variables often investigated in OACA studies, such as OA modality, funding, and funding source, and introduces journal publisher as a variable for OACA analysis.

URL : Open Access and Citation Impact: Modality, Funding, Publisher, and Disciplinary Trends at the University of Kentucky

DOI : https://doi.org/10.5860/lrts.69n3.8496