I have long waited before I share a special case of AI generated publishing in the field of educational technology which needs a public reflection and review. Approximately 3 months ago, I have received a citation alert which made me curious. One of our papers has been cited by a team of authors who have published a book in German on “Educational Data Mining and Learning Analytics”. The book has as subtitle “A machine generated overview”. Especially the fact that authors from Ireland have published a book in German and the use of generative AI for the book has made me even more curious.
Artificial Intelligence tools, such as generative text systems such as ChatGPT, are radically changing scientific publishing. They generate their text based on training material involving previously published text without attribution. It is a form of plagiarism, at least compression plagiarism. Many users of these systems may need to realise that the text produced for them will have this problem. This item is an account from an academic writer who found their work has been reused without attribution. It is an unsettling situation that should trouble anyone who has been published.
What I found was the Springer Nature Code of Conduct for book authors of which the following principles where especially important for me:
- Principle 1: “The submitted work must not contain any plagiarism and should not have been published elsewhere in any form or language”.
- Principle 2: “The work of others should always be properly acknowledged…Clarity should be provided on which text is the Authors’ own and which text has been used from others”.
- Principle 3: “A basic rule is that if the Author is not the creator of everything in the manuscript, they must get permission from copyright owners or have a valid license to use their content, unless it is ‘fair use / fair dealing’ or in the ‘public domain’”.
