Dr. Niemtzow’s editorial in this issue, entitled, “Artificial Intelligence Replacing the Contents of Medical Acupuncture? The Future of the Journal?,”might seem a bit futuristic, but high-tech artificial-intelligence (AI)–generated research has already made it into the scholarly literature.
This free access editorial, published in June 2023, looks at the characteristics of artificial intelligence-generated papers and paper mills, why they are a serious concern and the strategies used to identify them and deal with them. It is important that the guidance material and professional development activities of research institutions urge its researchers away from the use of such technologies and paper mill services. An individual doing so, and claiming a paper generated using these dodgy methods are forms of misconduct and should be treated as such.
The Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE) defines paper mills as: “profit oriented, unofficial and potentially illegal organizations that produce and sell fraudulent manuscripts that seem to resemble genuine research. They may also handle the administration of submitting the article to journals for review and sell authorship to researchers once the article is accepted for publication.”1
The availability of AI-powered research-paper mills posing a threat to research integrity is not a theoretical concept. According to a team of SAGE editors who prepared a blog post in collaboration with the Social Science Space, it’s already happening. “If an unreliable linguistic mash-up is freely accessible, while original research is costly and laborious, the former will thrive,” warned The Financial Times associate editor and chief business commentator, John Gapper.2
Stone, J.A.M. (2023) Artificial Intelligence–Generated Research in the Literature: Is It Real or Is It Fraud? Medical Acupuncture 35(3). pp103-104. DOI 10.1089/acu.2023.29231.editorial
Publisher (Free Access): https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/acu.2023.29231.editorial
