Global insights: ChatGPT’s influence on academic and research writing, creativity, and plagiarism policies

Authors : Muhammad Abid Malik, Amjad Islam Amjad, Sarfraz Aslam, Abdulnaser Fakhrou

Introduction: The current study explored the influence of Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (ChatGPT) on the concepts, parameters, policies, and practices of creativity and plagiarism in academic and research writing.

Methods: Data were collected from 10 researchers from 10 different countries (Australia, China, the UK, Brazil, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Nigeria, Trinidad and Tobago, and Turkiye) using semi-structured interviews. NVivo was employed for data analysis.

Results: Based on the responses, five themes about the influence of ChatGPT on academic and research writing were generated, i.e., opportunity, human assistance, thought-provoking, time-saving, and negative attitude. Although the researchers were mostly positive about it, some feared it would degrade their writing skills and lead to plagiarism. Many of them believed that ChatGPT would redefine the concepts, parameters, and practices of creativity and plagiarism.

Discussion: Creativity may no longer be restricted to the ability to write, but also to use ChatGPT or other large language models (LLMs) to write creatively. Some suggested that machine-generated text might be accepted as the new norm; however, using it without proper acknowledgment would be considered plagiarism. The researchers recommended allowing ChatGPT for academic and research writing; however, they strongly advised it to be regulated with limited use and proper acknowledgment.

URL : Global insights: ChatGPT’s influence on academic and research writing, creativity, and plagiarism policies

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2024.1486832

Academic writing in the age of AI: Comparing the reliability of ChatGPT and Bard with Scopus and Web of Science

Authors : Swati Garg, Asad Ahmad, Dag Øivind Madsen

ChatGPT and Bard (now known as Gemini) are becoming indispensable resources for researchers, academicians and diverse stakeholders within the academic landscape. At the same time, traditional digital tools such as scholarly databases continue to be widely used. Web of Science and Scopus are the most extensive academic databases and are generally regarded as consistently reliable scholarly research resources. With the increasing acceptance of artificial intelligence (AI) in academic writing, this study focuses on understanding the reliability of the new AI models compared to Scopus and Web of Science.

The study includes a bibliometric analysis of green, sustainable and ecological buying behaviour, covering the period from 1 January 2011 to 21 May 2023. These results are used to compare the results from the AI and the traditional scholarly databases on several parameters. Overall, the findings suggest that AI models like ChatGPT and Bard are not yet reliable for academic writing tasks. It appears to be too early to depend on AI for such tasks.

URL : Academic writing in the age of AI: Comparing the reliability of ChatGPT and Bard with Scopus and Web of Science

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jik.2024.100563

Academic co-authorship is a risky game

Authors : Teddy Lazebnik, Stephan Beck, Labib Shami

Conducting a project with multiple participants is a complex task that involves multiple social, economic, and psychological interactions. Conducting academic research in general and the process of writing an academic manuscript, in particular, is notorious for being challenging to successfully navigate due to the current form of collaboration dynamics common in academia.

In this study, we propose a game-theory-based model for a co-authorship writing project in which authors are allowed to raise an ultimatum, blocking the publishment of the manuscript if they do not get more credit for the work.

Using the proposed model, we explore the influence of the contribution and utility of publishing the manuscript on the rate one or more authors would gain from raising an ultimatum. Similarly, we show that the project’s duration and the current state have a major impact on this rate, as well as the number of authors.

In addition, we examine common student-advisor and colleague-colleague co-authorships scenarios. Our model reveals disturbing results and demonstrates that the current, broadly accepted, academic practices for collaborations are designed in a way that stimulates authors to raise an ultimatum and stopped only by their integrity and not by a systematic design.

URL : Academic co-authorship is a risky game

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04843-x