Tuesday, October 15, 2024

The article was written by Chinese researchers using ChatGPT. Scientific magazine scoffs: “We have to understand what happened”

“Confirm. Here's a possible introduction to your topic.” This is the sentence that was read until a few hours ago in A's summary Scientific material Featured in the scientific journal Roofs and facades, produced by Elsevier, a Dutch publishing house specializing in publishing medical and scientific publications. The sentence leaves no doubt: The authors of the article used ChatGPT or another AI-based language model to write the introduction. This does not mean that it is wrong. But one of the rules that researchers must respect for publishing with Elsevier is to clearly indicate whether artificial intelligence tools were used in preparing the article. Moreover, the presence of the phrase in the first line of the abstract raises doubts about the (apparently poor) accuracy adopted in Peer review From this article. Furthermore, it highlights the pressure that researchers are under, often having to publish many articles per year.

“We are investigating to find out how it happened.”

there Peer review It is the process by which researchers analyze the work of others to ensure that it has been carried out correctly, ensuring the reliability of scientific publications, and distinguishing them from those that are less reliable. In the case of Elsevier, “our policies make it clear that I… Great language model LLM can be used to write articles as long as it is authorized by the authors at the time of submission. “We are reviewing this article and are in discussions with the editorial team and authors,” the publisher wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter) regarding the article by Zhang et al. The fruit of the work of researchers from Peking University and Hangzhou University entitled: The 3D porous network structure of copper-based metal–organic framework–aramid cellulose separator enhances the electrochemical performance of lithium metal anode batteries..

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Publish or perish

And also how pointed out Also by scientific communicator Ruggero Rollini, an oversight in the introduction could be a symptom of the phenomenon known as the phrase Publish or publish. Three words that describe the system of pressures, incentives and disincentives that researchers are often exposed to, which pushes them to publish as many articles as possible, even at the expense of their quality. Specifically, in order to gain citations and prestige, universities, research centers, and scientific journals can push researchers to write articles continuously, in the hope that the volume of publications will increase their weight in the academic community. The other side of this coin is the focus that shifts from actual research to a focus on writing. Even when there isn't enough content to justify publishing a new article.

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