صعود التعليقات المدعومة بالذكاء الاصطناعي: التلاعب بالمقاييس العلمية وتخفيف جودة الأدبيات العلمية

The scientific publishing world is facing a growing crisis: a surge in low-quality commentaries, many seemingly generated by artificial intelligence (AI), is flooding journals, manipulating impact metrics, and casting a shadow on the validity of scholarly output. A joint investigation by Science and Retraction Watch reveals a disturbing trend where authors, journals, and institutions are incentivized to participate in this scheme, ultimately diluting the quality and trustworthiness of published research. This blog post delves into the key findings of the investigation, exploring the motivations behind this trend and its potential consequences.

The Commentary Surge and its Origins

The investigation highlights a dramatic increase in commentary articles in several journals.

• Journals like Neurosurgical Review, Oral Oncology Reports, and International Journal of Surgery Open have experienced a significant influx of commentaries.
• In Neurosurgical Review, commentaries comprised 58% of total output from January to October, a sharp increase from 9% the previous year.
• A significant majority (over 80%) of these commentaries originate from South Asian countries, contrasting with the origin of research and review articles.

The driving force behind this surge appears to be the ease with which AI tools like ChatGPT can generate these articles. Authors are motivated by the desire to quickly amass publications and citations, and commentaries provide an easy route due to their lack of requirement for original data and less stringent peer-review processes.

Gaming the System: Incentives for Authors, Journals, and Institutions

The investigation uncovers a web of incentives that encourage the publication of these low-quality commentaries.

• Authors: Commentaries offer a quick and easy way to build a publication record, as they don’t require original data and are easier to get published than full research articles.
• Journals: Many journals charge publication fees for commentaries, making them a profitable venture. Furthermore, commentaries provide an opportunity to inflate the journal impact factor, a key metric used to assess journal prestige. Journals may also encourage authors to cite their own papers, further boosting the impact factor.
• Institutions: Institutions can inflate their publication and citation numbers by encouraging the publication of commentaries, leading to improved rankings, which are often used for advertising and attracting funding.

The Case of Saveetha University

The investigation specifically highlights Saveetha University in India as a prime example of an institution manipulating metrics.

• An anonymous email revealed that three authors from Saveetha University published 69 comments in Neurosurgical Review within two months.
• These commentaries were suspected to be machine-written and lacked substantive relevance, citing irrelevant works from other Saveetha researchers.
• Previous investigations have found Saveetha University coercing students to write thousands of research papers and offering payments for listing Saveetha as an affiliation.
• The university denied any involvement and pointed fingers at Neurosurgical Review for publishing the commentaries.

Impact and Consequences

The proliferation of AI-generated and low-quality commentaries has several negative consequences.

• Dilution of Scientific Literature: The influx of poor-quality publications threatens to overwhelm the scientific literature, making it difficult to identify and access reliable research.
• Erosion of Trust: The manipulation of metrics and the publication of meaningless content erode trust in the scientific publishing process and the institutions involved.
• Misleading Rankings: Inflated publication and citation numbers can lead to misleading rankings, impacting funding decisions and research priorities.

In conclusion, the investigation reveals a concerning trend of AI-fueled commentaries being used to game scholarly metrics and inflate publication numbers. This practice undermines the integrity of scientific publishing and has far-reaching consequences for the quality and trustworthiness of research. Addressing this issue requires a concerted effort from publishers, institutions, and researchers to implement stricter quality control measures, promote ethical research practices, and prioritize the quality of research over quantity.

Source: Science and Retraction Watch