Category: Opinion

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Did these eight authors start buying authorships in 2022?

Image showing eight author profiles

Recentl, Nick Wise on 𝕏 reported a retraction as one author submitted the paper, but when it was published it had nine authors on it (you can see the post and my comment here (if you have an 𝕏 account) here.

The PubPeer comments are also worth a look.

 

 

Retraction

The reason for the retraction was:

“In investigating concerns brought up regarding inappropriate advertisement of the authorship of the article, the editor reached out to the authors for an explanation. Post-publication, the editor also discovered suspicious changes in authorship between the original submission and the revised version of this paper. In summary, the paper was submitted by a sole author, Parvaneh Delir Kheirollahi Nezhad. During revision, the author names Saade Abdalkareem Jasim (New First Author), Moaed E. Al-Gazally, Hasan Sh. Majdi, Yasir Salam Karim, Maria Jade Catalan Opulencia, Mustafa M. Kadhim (New Corresponding Author), Ali Thaeer Hammid, and Yasser Fakri Mustafa were all added to the revised paper without explanation and without exceptional approval by the journal editor, which is contrary to the journal policy on changes to authorship.“

Comments

We thought it might be interesting to look at the authors. The header image shows the nine authors. The last one is the author that submitted the paper, the other eight were added later. Here are some comments/observations.

 

  1. The most striking thing is that the eight “invited” authors all saw a dramatic rise in the number of publications in 2022 (this is shown by the red highlight for each author). Could this be when they started buying authorships?
  2. It’s also interesting to see the publication record of these eight authors since 2022. This is varied. Not sure what to make of that. You would have thought if they were buying authorships, they would keep doing it?
  3. The last author (the person that submitted the paper originally as a single author), their publication profile is different to the other eight authors, in that they did not see a sudden rise in 2022.

Do you have a view?

Do you have any views/comments as to what (if anything) can be read into these author profiles (from Scopus, 25 Aug 2024)?

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Selling of authorships: Elsevier please investigate

Image showing two papers that were selling authorships and subsequently published

This article was originally posted as a tweet, but we thought it was worth posting on this blog, in the hope that it will reach even more people.

Selling of authorships

It is easy to find adverts which are offering authorships for sale. What is a little unusual is to find the advert with the title of the paper and the journal where the article will be published, … and then to see the article in print. The header image shows two examples of this.

Journal of Energy Storage

The Journal of Energy Storage, an Elsevier journal, should (in our view) look into this issue, as they seem to have published two papers where the authors paid to be an author on the paper.

That is, an advert for the sale of authorships, for two papers, and the subsequent publication of those papers with the same exact titles in the Journal of Energy Storage.

We hope that the EiC (Luisa F. Cabeza) is aware of this and will take the appropriate action.

 

The two articles can be seen here:

  1. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.est.2022.105311
  2. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.est.2022.106166

 

Pubpeer

We note that these two articles have been mentioned on PubPeer. You can see the PubPeer entries here:

  1. Optimal economic scheduling of microgrids considering renewable energy sources based on energy hub model using demand response and improved water wave optimization algorithm
  2. Optimal dispatch of dynamic power and heat considering load management, water pump system, and renewable resources by grasshopper optimization algorithm

 

Our previous experience

In one of our previous lives, we have been EiC of a journal and if something like this happened (nothing like this happened, but things did), the EiC convened an independent committee to look at the issue and provide a recommendation.

Not saying this is what should happen here (every publisher will have slightly different SOP’s) but the fact that there was somebody offering authorships for a paper of this title and the fact that a paper appeared with this title must be enough to start an investigation? Indeed, such an investigation may have already started.

 

No assumption of guilt

We are not saying that the authors are guilty. Perhaps:

  • They are totally innocent and this can be explained
  • The authors have been duped and are, at best, naive
  • One of the authors coerced (at least) one of the other authors
  • … or some other explanation

 

Access to information

The journal will have access to things like:

  • The peer review reports
  • When authors were added/changed, and at one stage of the publication
  • Acceptance from the author that they participated in a way that warrants being an author
  • Access to the corresponding author

It is also possible to look at the history of the authors and, if the authors have published in other Elsevier journals, then they should be able to look at the history of those papers just to see if there are any worrying patterns.

 

Could we investigate ourselves?

We could investigate ourselves, but we don’t have the same access to information that the publisher/journal does so, we hope, that they will take the initiative.

 

Finally

Everything may be above board and the journal, EiC, authors etc. have nothing to answer here, but it does need looking at. If nothing else to protect the reputation of the publisher, the journal and the EiC. And also to take appropriate action should that be necessary.

 

Tweets which motivated this article

You can see the original Twitter posts from, @author_for_sale, on which this post is based here:

  1. https://twitter.com/author_for_sale/status/1697298062685642877
  2. https://twitter.com/author_for_sale/status/1697297679678628291
 
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Should publishers pay to help detect AI generated content?

Chimpanzee saying “Should publishers pay to help detect AI generated content?”

Introduction

We recently saw an article published in Retraction Watch which talks about AI generated content and how it creates citations to papers which do not exist.

 

The article is worth a read, but we were particularly drawn to a one part of the article.

A quote from an MDPI representative

This statement was made by a representative at MDPI, but the same sentiment could have been made by any publisher.

 

In this article we consider a possible consequence of this, what at first sight, might seem a benign statement.

The need for better AI detectors

Given the introduction of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, and the many hundreds of tools that have been released in the past year, there is an urgent need to detect AI generated content. This is required for a number of reasons.

  1. An AI generator tool cannot be listed as an author, so the human authors have to take responsibility for the article. As such, content cannot be simply generated by an AI tool and published as-is.
  2. At the present time, AI tools are not able to develop knowledge, which is a main requirement of a peer reviewed scientific paper. That is, the paper must make a contribution to the development of the current knowledge base. AI, at the present time, can only draw on the existing knowledge base due to the way it is trained.
  3. Peer reviewers have the right to know that what they are reading is written by (or not) an AI tool. Similarly, authors have a right to know that their paper is being reviewed by a human and not an AI tool, but that is a different topic.
  4. Authors are required to acknowledge any help they have received and this includes AI tools. If AI is detected, and it has not been acknowledged, this could be a reason for rejecting a paper.

How can we detect AI generated content?

Unfortunately, we cannot tell you how to detect AI generated content, but we do know that there is a lot of work being done in this area.

 

It won’t come as a surprise that the scholarly community will play a significant role in the development of such tools.

 

To be truthful, I suspect that the community will relish and rise to this challenge. After all, that is what researchers live to do; look at problems and try to find solutions.

Who will fund the research into detecting AI generated content?

Like a lot of research, it will be funded by universities and/or research grants. Research grants are most likely funded by the public purse, that is tax payers money. It is the tax payers that is likely to bear the largest burden.

 

Research will also be carried out by corporations, with the expectation that they will get a return of that investment by selling, or licensing, the software that is developed. It is good to see corporations investing in R&D but one downside is that they are less inclined to publish, so the know how will be less widely disseminated than if the research was carried out in a university, where there are pressures to publish the results of that research.

 

Who benefits financially from research into detecting AI generated content?

The simple answer is that corporations that develop these detectors will benefit as they will have a product to sell.

 

Researchers and universities will benefit as they will be able to publish their research, in the same way that they benefit from other research they undertake. This may not lead to a direct financial benefit unless they are able to protect the intellectual property and exploit it in some way. This is certainly possible, but the majority of research is not exploited in this way as there is more pressure on publishing papers, which places the research into the public domain.

 

The other beneficiaries will be those that use the AI detectors. Publishers will come under increasing pressure to detect AI generated content and if they are able to do this in a financially prudent way (i.e. cheaply) then so much the better, for the publisher anyway.

Who should the develop of detecting AI generated content?

In the above message from MDPI it says:

 

“We hope that more powerful tools will be developed to assist in the detection of AI-generated content.“

 

We are sure that everybody wishes for this, for the reasons given above, but it does beg the question, who should fund the development of these tools?

 

In “The money behind academic publishing“, it states that:

 

“Elsevier has a profit margin approaching 40%, which is higher than that of companies such as Microsoft, Google and Coca Cola, and the curve is pointing upwards“, citing several sources such as a Guardian article, an STM report and an article in The Bookseller.

 

Given that scholarly publishing is a profitable industry, should they not pick up part of the bill for addressing the issues that are of concern to not only their sector but also to their customers?

 

If effective tools are not developed, the sector that supports their livelihoods will fall (further) into disrepute as those less scrupulous than themselves will take advantage of these tools and our inability to detect their use will enable agents,

 

Final Thoughts

Scholarly publishers are often criticized for taking advantage of the scholarly community by charging them to publish the articles are/or charging them to read their own work. This is done via article processing charges (APCs) [to pay to publish an article] or subscription fees [to pay to read articles that a scholar has written but then signed the copyright over to the publisher].

Moreover, the scholars not only write the papers (and pay for the privilege) but also act as an unpaid work force in reviewing and acting as editors for the journals.

We hope that the development of tools to detect AI generated content is not another example which the scholarly community effectively funds and the publishers take advantage of, at no cost to themselves.

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If you use ChatGPT, you must acknowledge it

A chimps face with a slogan next to it

Artificial Intelligence is here to stay

Whether you are a fan of AI; or not, whether you believe it should be used as part of the research process; or not and whether you have experimented with these tools; or not, there is one certainty – AI is here and it is here to stay.

The question is, how do we deal with these new tools?

What are Artificial Intelligence's use cases in scientific publishing?

It’s generally accepted (for now anyway) that ChatGPT (or more generally large language models – we will use the terms interchangeably) is not capable of producing insights, or new knowledge, that would warrant publication in a peer reviewed scientific paper.

 

However, there are many ways that ChatGPT can help scholars, including (but certainly not limited to):

  1. Given the main text of your paper, it could write an abstract.
  2. Given an abstract, a Large Language Model can suggest a title.
  3. Given an abstract, an LLM can suggest the main headings you might consider for your paper.
  4. Given various parts of your paper, ChatGPT can write a conclusion section.
  5. Give some text of the points you want to make and the LLM can draft a section of the paper for you.
  6. If you are struggling with some code, you can ask ChatGPT to write the code for you.
  7. If you are not happy with your text, you can ask ChatGPT to summarize it in the form of a bulleted list.
  8. An LLM can suggest ideas to develop your paper further, which could then be used as the basis of a Future Work section.
  9. Ask ChatGPT to suggest the best way to analyze some data that you will use in the paper.
  10. You can ask the LLM to rephrase text so that the writing is more formal, and more suitable for a scientific journal.

There are many (many, many) videos on how you can use ChatGPT for your research. If you want to get lost in the myriad of material that is out there, the four videos below might be good starting points. We’ll see you in a few hours :-).

The author's responsibility when writing a scientific paper

For each of the above use cases it could be argued that these are the responsibility of the author. In fact, let’s be clear, they are the responsibility of the author, and let nobody tell you otherwise. You can delegate these tasks to AI but the final paper is the responsibility of the author(s).

 

Most journals now make statements that ChatGPT cannot be an author on a paper with two often used reasons being:

  1. The AI engine cannot be held responsible for what is written
  2. The copyright of the text from the AI engine cannot be attributed to the AI, therefore, the author(s) holds the copyright.

Here are a couple of examples about authorships from well-known publishers; Elsevier (archived here) and Taylor & Francis (archived here).

Guidelines for author(s) who use a Large Language Model

If authors you use an AI tool to help you write their paper there is nothing wrong with that but its use must acknowledge in the paper.

 

We would go slightly further and suggest the following guidelines:

  1. The author(s) must acknowledge that they used an AI tool in the preparation of your paper.
  2. The author(s) should provide details about the AI tool that was used. For example “ChatGPT version 3.5”
  3. The author(s) should specify which parts of the paper were prepared with AI assistance.
  4. Brief details should be provided as to how the AI tools was used.
  5. Although it does not have to be provided as part of the paper, it would be useful for the author(s) to retain logs of the AI tool, in the same way that you would make a record in a research/lab notebook.
  6. If the paper has multiple authors, then it should be assumed, unless otherwise stated, that all the authors are aware that an AI tool was used.

Guidelines for publishers on the use of Large Language Models

Publishers/journals should ensure that their advice to authors are clear, unambiguous and what actions may be taken if that guidance is not followed.

 

We would suggest that the guidelines from the publishers follow a similar model to those suggested above for the authors.

 

IEEE have some guidelines (archived here), which states:

“The use of artificial intelligence (AI)–generated text in an article shall be disclosed in the acknowledgements section of any paper submitted to an IEEE Conference or Periodical. The sections of the paper that use AI-generated text shall have a citation to the AI system used to generate the text. For more information“

 

We welcome this statement but would argue that it does not go far enough.

At a minimum, we would suggest that a sentence should be added that says that if it is discovered that this guidance has not been followed and that full disclosure about the use of AI is not given then the paper could be retracted and the authors banned from submitting to journals published by that publisher for (say) five years.

Call to Action

Whether we like it or not, Artificial Intelligence is here to stay. We cannot stop it and we have to learn to live with it and accept it as now part of our lives.
 
From a scientific publishing point of view, we urge all publishers to provide guidelines that state how authors should acknowledge the use of AI tools and, importantly, what are the consequences of violating those guidelines.
 
As an author, you should acknowledge the use of AI tools and be honest in how they have contributed to the article.
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Universities should ban submissions to some publishers

A chimpanzee with a slogen next to it

Who decides which journal you will send your papers to?

The decision where to send your latest article is made by the individual researcher, often in consultation with their peers and supervisor, and that is right.

 

However, what if there is money involved, in the form of article processing charges (APCs)? In this case, should the budget holder have some input into the decision where papers can be sent? The answer is yes.

 

The person who has obtained the research funding, or holds the School/Faculty budget, has a responsibility to ensure that any funds are spent in a responsible way. They need to balance the needs of the researcher (to publish or perish) against the requirement to get value for money from the funds that they have been entrusted with.

 

But, this responsibility goes beyond the budget holder. There  is a large responsibility on the funds provider, in that they should ensure that they specify how the funds can (and importantly can’t) be spent.

Should the funder decide what research funds can be used for?

Research funds are not an individual’s own money, well often not – some researchers may decide to use their personal money to fund APC’s, but that is a different debate.

 

The budget holder has been entrusted with the funds and must spend them in line with the contract, and also ensure that the funder gets value for money. These funds come from a variety of sources, such as the tax payer (most of it probably), student registration fees and income from spin out companies.

 

The point is, that there has been a lot of time and effort in raising these funds, and they are a scarce resource. These finances could be used for a variety of other things, not just funding research article charges, for example, education, medical care or social security. We owe it to all those that have provided the funds that they are not used inappropriately, for example:

  1. To line the pockets of predatory journals/publishers.
  2. To support inferior journals.
  3. To submit to journals which offer the line of least resistance (e.g. send to journals where you expect to get quick reviews and/or the reviewing is less stringent that other journals).
  4. Submit articles to journals which are likely to accept them but are unlikely to have the impact (i.e. attract citations) that a higher quality article may have.

The world is not short of scientific journals

We have said before that the world is not short of journals where you can send your research papers to.

 

PublishingState.com says “It is estimated that there are currently more than 30,000 academic journals, and the number continues to increase by about 5%-7% per year.” This number of 30,000 seems low to us (if you include predatory journals), but read the full article and see what you think.

 

The point is, we should err on the side of caution when deciding on a journal where we will submit our papers to. Don’t respond to spammy emails, if you feel uneasy about about  a journal/publisher look elsewhere and submit to journals where your (respected) peers are publishing and where your work has been cited.

 

Funders/universities should ban submission to certain publishers/journals

It is perfectly reasonable for those who distribute research funds to say how those funds can be spent.

 

They do not have to justify why they are imposing certain conditions. If you, as a researcher, do not like those conditions, don’t accept the research funding.

 

We would encourage funders (whether that be research councils, governments, industrial funders etc.) and universities to draw up a list of publishers/journals that CANNOT be used to disseminate the results of the research carried out under that affiliation.

 

We have seen this done previously (although this case was in the context of not recognizing certain publishers for promotion, rather than banning submission to them), but it is not that common and we feel that it could be a significant way to not only stop your researchers publishing in predatory (or at least suspicious) journals but also to provide the checks and balances to ensure that the research funds are being used effectively.

Call to action

We call on universities specifically, to draw up a list of publishers/journals that they will not allow their researchers to submit to or, at least, they cannot use university funds to support the article processing charges if they do submit to those journals.

 

Of course, the debate about what publishers/journals should be on the banned list will be subject to a lot of debate, discussion and criticism but that is not a reason not to do it.

 

Get something in place and review it annually. Missing the opportunity to submit to a good journal is better than a whole load of submissions being made (and paid for) to journals which are less reputable.

 

We challenge universities to act decisively in this matter. If we can help/advise in any way, let us know.