Science Journals Ban Listing of ChatGPT as Co-Author on Papers

The publishers of thousands of scientific journals have banned or restricted contributors' use of an advanced AI-driven chatbot amid concerns that it could pepper academic literature with flawed and even fabricated research. From a report: ChatGPT, a fluent but flaky chatbot developed by OpenAI in California, has impressed or distressed more than a million human users by rattling out poems, short stories, essays and even personal advice since its launch in November. But while the chatbot has proved a huge source of fun -- its take on how to free a peanut butter sandwich from a VCR, in the style of the King James Bible, is one notable hit -- the program can also produce fake scientific abstracts that are convincing enough to fool human reviewers. ChatGPT's more legitimate uses in article preparation have already led to it being credited as a co-author on a handful of papers. The sudden arrival of ChatGPT has prompted a scramble among publishers to respond. On Thursday, Holden Thorp, the editor-in-chief of the leading US journal Science, announced an updated editorial policy, banning the use of text from ChatGPT and clarifying that the program could not be listed as an author. Leading scientific journals require authors to sign a form declaring that they are accountable for their contribution to the work. Since ChatGPT cannot do this, it cannot be an author, Thorp says. But even using ChatGPT in the preparation of a paper is problematic, he believes. ChatGPT makes plenty of errors, which could find their way into the literature, he says, and if scientists come to rely on AI programs to prepare literature reviews or summarise their findings, the proper context of the work and the deep scrutiny that results deserve could be lost. "That is the opposite direction of where we need to go," he said. Other publishers have made similar changes. On Tuesday, Springer-Nature, which publishes nearly 3,000 journals, updated its guidelines to state that ChatGPT cannot be listed as an author. But the publisher has not banned ChatGPT outright. The tool, and others like it, can still be used in the preparation of papers, provided full details are disclosed in the manuscript.

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