Academ-AI: documenting the undisclosed use of generative artificial intelligence in academic publishing

TL;DR

This paper investigates the widespread, often undeclared, use of generative AI in academic publishing by analyzing 768 suspected cases, highlighting the need for publishers to enforce disclosure policies.

Contribution

It introduces a method to detect undeclared AI usage in research papers and provides the first large-scale analysis of such instances across reputable academic outlets.

Findings

Undeclared AI use is prevalent across top-tier journals and conferences.

Most cases are not corrected post-publication.

Detection based on characteristic language patterns is effective.

Abstract

Since generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as OpenAI's ChatGPT became widely available, researchers have used them in the writing process. The consensus of the academic publishing community is that such usage must be declared in the published article. Academ-AI documents examples of suspected undeclared AI usage in the academic literature, discernible primarily due to the appearance in research papers of idiosyncratic verbiage characteristic of large language model (LLM)-based chatbots. This analysis of the first 768 examples collected reveals that the problem is widespread, penetrating the journals, conference proceedings, and textbooks of highly respected publishers. Undeclared AI seems to appear in journals with higher citation metrics and higher article processing charges (APCs), precisely those outlets that should theoretically have the resources and expertise to avoid such oversights. An extremely small minority of cases are corrected post publication, and the corrections are often insufficient to rectify the problem. The 768 examples analyzed here likely represent a small fraction of the undeclared AI present in the academic literature, much of which may be undetectable. Publishers must enforce their policies against undeclared AI usage in cases that are detectable; this is the best defense currently available to the academic publishing community against the proliferation of undisclosed AI. This is an updated version of a previous preprint.