Étiquette : scientific communication

Assessing the Societal Impact of Academic Research With Artificial Intelligence (AI): A Scoping Review of Business School Scholarship as a ‘Force for Good’

Auteur de l’article Par Hans Dillaerts
Date de l’article 13 juin 2025

Authors : David Steingard, Kathleen Rodenburg

This study addresses critical questions about how current evaluative frameworks for academic research can effectively translate scholarly findings into practical applications and policies to tackle societal ‘grand challenges’.

This scoping review analysis was conducted using bibliometric methods and AI tools. Articles were drawn from a wide range of disciplines, with particular emphasis on the business and management fields, focusing on the burgeoning scholarship area of ‘business as a force for good’.

The novel integration of generative AI research approaches underscores the transformative potential of AI-human collaboration in academic research. Metadata from 4051 articles were examined in the scoping review, with only 370 articles (9.1%) explicitly identified as relevant to societal impact.

This finding reveals a substantial and concerning gap in research addressing the urgent social and environmental issues of our time. To address this gap, the study identifies six meta-themes related to enhancing the societal impact of research: business applications; faculty publication pressure; societal impact focus; sustainable development; university and scholarly rankings; and reference to responsible research frameworks.

Key findings highlight critical misalignments between research outputs and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and a lack of practical business applications of research insights.

The results emphasise the urgent need for academic institutions to expand evaluation criteria beyond traditional metrics to prioritise real-world impacts. Recommendations include developing holistic evaluation frameworks and incentivising research that addresses pressing societal challenges—shifting academia from a ‘scholar-to-scholar’ to a ‘scholar-to-society’ paradigm.

The implications of this shift are applied to business-related scholarship and its potential to inspire meaningful societal impact through business practice.

URL : Assessing the Societal Impact of Academic Research With Artificial Intelligence (AI): A Scoping Review of Business School Scholarship as a ‘Force for Good’

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.2010

Étiquettes Artificial intelligence, David Steingard, Kathleen Rodenburg, metrics, Research Assessment, research impact, scientific communication, societal impact

Platforms, programmability, and precarity: The platformization of research repositories in academic libraries

Auteur de l’article Par Hans Dillaerts
Date de l’article 4 juin 2025

Authors : Jean-Christophe Plantin, Andrea Thomer

We investigate in this article how repository platforms change the sharing and preservation of digital objects in academic libraries. We use evidence drawn from semi-structured interviews with 31 data repository managers working at 21 universities using the product Figshare for institutions.

We first show that repository managers use this platform to bring together actors, technologies, and processes usually scattered across the library to assign to them the tasks that they value less—such as data preparation or IT maintenance—and spend more time engaging in activities they appreciate—such as raising awareness of data sharing.

While this platformization of data management improves their job satisfaction, we reveal how it simultaneously accentuates the outsourcing of libraries’ core mission to private actors. We eventually discuss how this platformization can deskill librarians and perpetuate precarity politics in university libraries.

URL : Platforms, programmability, and precarity: The platformization of research repositories in academic libraries

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231176758

Étiquettes academic libraries, Andrea Thomer, Jean-Christophe Plantin, open repositories, platformization, scientific communication

Publication en accès ouvert et coûts d’Article Processing Charges (APC) en Argentine

Auteur de l’article Par Hans Dillaerts
Date de l’article 3 juin 2025

Auteur.ices : Fernanda Beigel, Osvaldo Gallardo, Soledad Gomez, Flavia Prado

La prolifération des revues en libre accès présente un dilemme difficile pour les chercheurs basés en Argentine, en raison des coûts élevés des APC (Article Processing Charges) qui créent un écart entre ceux qui peuvent payer pour publier et ceux qui ne le peuvent pas. Dans la première partie de ce travail, nous analysons le problème des frais APC dans différents pays d’Amérique latine et les leçons des études réalisées sur le cas de l’Argentine.

Nous décrivons ensuite la population de chercheurs faisant l’objet de l’enquête — les directeurs de projets financés au niveau national — ainsi que la méthode utilisée et ses résultats. Nous proposons une classification des pratiques de publication en libre accès avec APC en quatre groupes comprenant des chercheurs de plusieurs disciplines.

Dans chaque groupe, on observe des tendances différentes vers la publication en accès ouvert ou fermé, l’origine des fonds utilisés pour payer les APC et les disciplines dans lesquelles ce phénomène a plus ou moins d’impact. Enfin, nous analysons la section qualitative de l’enquête qui comprend les questions ouvertes auxquelles ont répondu une bonne partie des chercheurs, offrant un aperçu de leurs stratégies face au problème et les voies envisagées pour en atténuer les effets néfastes.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/140p9

Étiquettes Argentina, article-processing charges, Fernanda Beigel, Flavia Prado, open access, open access publishing, Osvaldo Gallardo, Scholarly Publishing, scientific communication, Soledad Gomez

And Plato met ChatGPT: an ethical reflection on the use of chatbots in scientific research writing, with a particular focus on the social sciences

Auteur de l’article Par Hans Dillaerts
Date de l’article 26 mai 2025

Authors : Reyes Calderon, Francisco Herrera

This interdisciplinary paper analyzes the use of Large Language Models based chatbots (LLM-chatbots), with ChatGPT the most known exponent, in scientific research writing. By interacting with LLM-chatbots, researchers could reduce efforts and costs as well as improve efficiency, but taking important risks, limitations, and weaknesses, which could highly-order erosion scientific thought.

While many scientific journals, as well as major publishers such as Springer-Nature or Taylor & Francis, are restricting its use, others advocate for its normalization. Debate focuses on two main questions: the possible authorship of LLM-chatbots, which is majority denied because their inability to meet the required standards; and the acceptance of hybrid articles (using LLM-chatbots).

Very recently, focusing on the education area, literature has found analogical similarities between some issues involved in Chatbots and that of Plato criticisms of writing, contained in the Phaedrus. However, the research area has been neglected. Combining philosophical and technological analysis, we explore Plato’s myth of Theuth and Thamus, questioning if chatbots can improve science. From an interdisciplinary perspective, and according with Plato, we conclude LLM-chatbots cannot be considered as authors in a scientific context.

Moreover, we offer some arguments and requirements to accept hybrid articles. We draw attention to the need for social science publishers, an area where conceptual hypotheses can take a long time to confirm, rather than solely on experimental observations. Finally, we advocate that publishers, communities, technical experts, and regulatory authorities collaborate to establish recommendations and best practices for chatbot use.

URL : And Plato met ChatGPT: an ethical reflection on the use of chatbots in scientific research writing, with a particular focus on the social sciences

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-04650-0

Étiquettes ChatGPT, Francisco Herrera, Generative Artificial Intelligence, Reyes Calderon, scientific article, scientific communication, social sciences

Podcasting as Open Access: A Review and Discussion of Potential Impact on Scholarly Communication and Promotion

Auteur de l’article Par Hans Dillaerts
Date de l’article 19 mai 2025

Authors : Allison Symulevich, Matt Torrence, Jason Boczar, Jessica Szempruch

Introduction

Academic Podcasts are an informal way for faculty members to share their research expertise with an expanded and international audience. In this article, we argue that podcasts are a form of informal scholarly communication and that libraries can contribute to the successful dissemination of this informal scholarly communication.

Description of Service

At the University of South Florida, episodes of faculty-created academic podcasts are posted to the institutional repository, allowing the dissemination of these podcasts permanently via open access. The open-access nature of these materials makes them freely available to faculty, students, and other scholars; additionally, it helps to improve metrics capturing while demonstrating international impact.

In comparing the measures afforded to record statistics, as well as other geographic and various platforms used, the authors leaned on internal resources and concepts from the literature to examine existing measures and reporting related to podcasting efforts.

Next Steps

Through the study of both existing services at the University of South Florida and other universities, as well as the literature, what remains is to increasingly document and standardize methods of measuring the impact of academic podcasts and related types of open-access content.

URL : Podcasting as Open Access: A Review and Discussion of Potential Impact on Scholarly Communication and Promotion

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.18241

Étiquettes Allison Symulevich, Jason Boczar, Jessica Szempruch, Matt Torrence, open access, Scholarly Podcasting, scientific communication