Tag: adopt

  • Publishers Adopt AI Tools to Bolster Research Integrity

    Publishers Adopt AI Tools to Bolster Research Integrity

    The perennial pressure to publish or perish is intense as ever for faculty trying to advance their careers in an exceedingly tight academic job market. On top of their teaching loads, faculty are expected to publish—and peer review—research findings, often receiving little to no compensation beyond the prestige and recognition of publishing in top journals.

    Some researchers have argued that such an environment incentivizes scholars to submit questionable work to journals—many have well-documented peer-review backlogs and inadequate resources to detect faulty information and academic misconduct. In 2024, more than 4,600 academic papers were retracted or otherwise flagged for review, according to the Retraction Watch database; during a six-week span last fall, one scientific journal published by Springer Nature retracted more than 200 articles.

    But the $19 billion academic publishing industry is increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to speed up production and, advocates say, enhance research quality. Since the start of the year, Wiley, Elsevier and Springer Nature have all announced the adoption of generative AI–powered tools or guidelines, including those designed to aid scientists in research, writing and peer review.

    “These AI tools can help us improve research integrity, quality, accurate citation, our ability to find new insights and connect the dots between new ideas, and ultimately push the human enterprise forward,” Josh Jarrett, senior vice president of AI growth at Wiley, told Inside Higher Ed earlier this month. “AI tools can also be used to generate content and potentially increase research integrity risk. That’s why we’ve invested so much in using these tools to stay ahead of that curve, looking for patterns and identifying things a single reviewer may not catch.”

    However, most scholars aren’t yet using AI for such a purpose. A recent survey by Wiley found that while the majority of researchers believe AI skills will be critical within two years, more than 60 percent said lack of guidelines and training keep them from using it in their work.

    In response, Wiley released new guidelines last week on “responsible and effective” uses of AI, aimed at deploying the technology to make the publishing process more efficient “while preserving the author’s authentic voice and expertise, maintaining reliable, trusted, and accurate content, safeguarding intellectual property and privacy, and meeting ethics and integrity best practices,” according to a news release.

    Last week, Elsevier also launched ScienceDirect AI, which extracts key findings from millions of peer-reviewed articles and books on ScienceDirect and generates “precise summaries” to alleviate researchers’ challenges of “information overload, a shortage of time and the need for more effective ways to enhance existing knowledge,” according to a news release.

    Both of those announcements followed Springer Nature’s January launch of an in-house AI-powered program designed to help editors and peer reviewers by automating editorial quality checks and alerting editors to potentially unsuitable manuscripts.

    “As the volume of research increases, we are excited to see how we can best use AI to support our authors, editors and peer reviewers, simplifying their ways of working whilst upholding quality,” Harsh Jegadeesan, Springer’s chief publishing officer, said in a news release. “By carefully introducing new ways of checking papers to enhance research integrity and support editorial decision-making we can help speed up everyday tasks for researchers, freeing them up to concentrate on what matters to them—conducting research.”

    ‘Obvious Financial Benefit’

    Academic publishing experts believe there are both advantages—and down sides—of involving AI in the notoriously slow peer-review process, which is plagued by a deficit of qualified reviewers willing and able to offer their unpaid labor to highly profitable publishers.

    If use of AI assistants becomes the norm for peer reviewers, “the volume problem would be immediately gone from the industry” while creating an “obvious financial benefit” for the publishing industry, said Sven Fund, managing director of the peer-review-expert network Reviewer Credits.

    But the implications AI has for research quality are more nuanced, especially as scientific research has become a target for conservative politicians and AI models could be—and may already be being—used to target terms or research lawmakers don’t like.

    “There are parts of peer review where a machine is definitely better than a human brain,” Fund said, pointing to low-intensity tasks such as translations, checking references and offering authors more thorough feedback as examples. “My concern would be that researchers writing and researching on whatever they want is getting limited by people reviewing material with the help of technical agents … That can become an element of censorship.”

    Aashi Chaturvedi, program officer for ethics and integrity at the American Society for Microbiology, said one of her biggest concerns about the introduction of AI into peer review and other aspects of the publishing process is maintaining human oversight.

    “Just as a machine might produce a perfectly uniform pie that lacks the soul of a handmade creation, AI reviews can appear wholesome but fail to capture the depth and novelty of the research,” she wrote in a recent article for ASM, which has developed its own generative AI guidelines for the numerous scientific journals it publishes. “In the end, while automation can enhance efficiency, it cannot replicate the artistry and intuition that come from years of dedicated practice.”

    But that doesn’t mean AI has no place in peer review, said Chaturvedi, who said in a recent interview that she “felt extra pressure to make sure that everything the author was reporting sounds doable” during her 17 years working as an academic peer reviewer in the pre-AI era. As the pace and complexity of scientific discovery keeps accelerating, she said AI can help alleviate some burden on both reviewers and the publishers “handling a large volume of submissions.”

    Chaturvedi cautioned, however, that introducing such technology across the academic publishing process should be transparent and come only after “rigorous” testing.

    “The large language models are only as good as the information you give them,” she said. “We are at a pivotal moment where AI can greatly enhance workflows, but you need careful and strategic planning … That’s the only way to get more successful and sustainable outcomes.”

    Not Equipped to Ensure Quality?

    Ivan Oransky, a medical researcher and co-founder of Retraction Watch, said, “Anything that can be done to filter out the junk that’s currently polluting the scientific literature is a good thing,” and “whether AI can do that effectively is a reasonable question.”

    But beyond that, the publishing industry’s embrace of AI in the name of improving research quality and clearing up peer-review backlogs belies a bigger problem predating the rise of powerful generative AI models.

    “The fact that publishers are now trumpeting the fact that they both are and need to be—according to them—using AI to fight paper mills and other bad actors is a bit of an admission they hadn’t been willing to make until recently: Their systems are not actually equipped to ensure quality,” Oransky said.

    “This is just more evidence that people are trying to shove far too much through the peer-review system,” he added. “That wouldn’t be a problem except for the fact that everybody’s either directly—or implicitly—encouraging terrible publish-or-perish incentives.”

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  • Academic unions should adopt neutrality (opinion)

    Academic unions should adopt neutrality (opinion)

    Institutional neutrality at universities is having its moment in the aftermath of a year of nationwide campus protests over the Israel-Gaza war. The list of universities that have adopted neutrality has grown over the course of the past 12 months. The concept necessarily is expanding to include conversations around university investments. Yet, academic unions have slipped under the radar as purveyors of positions on political issues. They should not be neglected in the push for neutral stances except for those that directly pertain to an institutional mission. In the case of the union, this should be to promote labor interests. Professors from a range of ideologies should be able to find common cause for collective bargaining purposes without being forced into supporting other political positions.

    The lack of neutrality of professors’ unions on non-labor-related issues is a pernicious problem. Federal law and some state laws that pertain to unions work to compel professors’ speech. Under the federal National Labor Relations Act, if a majority of private sector workers voting in a union election choose to unionize, all workers in that bargaining unit must be exclusively represented by that union. New York’s Taylor Law requires the same for public employees. And, if workers want the benefits of membership, like voting for union leadership and contracts, they must pay dues.

    While public employees could choose not to be union members before the Supreme Court’s 2017 Janus v. AFSCME ruling, that case now guarantees their right to not pay agency fees. But even if workers wish to eschew membership and not pay fees, they cannot dissociate entirely. They are required to be represented by a union that speaks via statements at the local, state and national level on many non-labor-related subjects. Therefore, with their veneer of solidarity, unions quash viewpoint diversity and suppress First Amendment rights. They tie one of the only forms of dissent possible (withdrawing dues) to disenfranchisement from the union, the organization that negotiates their wages and labor conditions.

    Professors who do stop paying their dues are often derided as “free riders.” They risk offending union leadership, who have a say in university processes that can impact their employment, like grievances and denial of reappointment. The union is formally required to provide equal advocacy as their exclusive representative. However, even if one believes biases will never prevail against “free riders,” there is still the suppressive impact of professors’ perception that paying dues and keeping quiet is best for their careers.

    And so, professors are forced into a kind of protection racket, paying unions that may endorse positions with which they may disagree. The National Education Association has opined on everything from ending private prisons to climate change, from promoting women-led businesses to helmets for motorcyclists. They have issued statements on the Israel-Gaza conflict, advocated for codifying Roe v. Wade into law and called for Donald Trump’s ouster. They have adopted progressive ideological lenses throughout such statements, arguing for instance that “white supremacy culture” is prevalent in the current U.S., and that “intersectionality must be … addressed … in order to advance the [NEA’s] social justice work.”

    To be clear, I am not arguing that these positions taken by unions are bad. I am not reflecting my own political preferences. I am not highlighting progressive examples to critique only progressive examples: I could find none that can be considered conservative. I am not saying that it’s not possible that a majority of members agree with the statements. I am also not arguing that workers do not have the right to form associations to advocate for political causes.

    What I am arguing is that due to laws making exclusive representation compulsory, unions should adopt neutrality on political issues that do not impact the primary purpose of academic unions: advocating for professors’ interests as workers. This lets ideological diversity exist and prevents coerced speech and dues payments. This neutrality is of paramount importance with public sector unions, where union leadership activities may receive taxpayer-subsidized administrative benefits.

    This neutrality should extend to political endorsements of individual candidates. While there may be some argument to be made that endorsing a pro-union or pro–higher education candidate over their opponent directly pertains to professors’ interests as workers, this carries with it implicit endorsement of a wide slate of other policies. A better approach would be for unions to support (or critique) candidates’ specific policy proposals or voting records. It would also reduce antagonism between unions and candidates they did not endorse, should those be elected.

    Recent examples show the perils of academic unions not having a neutrality standard. In 2018, a University of Maine professor sued his union, noting his opposition to its stances, like endorsing Hillary Clinton for president. More recently, in 2022, six City University of New York professors filed suit against the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), which passed a pro-Palestinian resolution they viewed as antisemitic. They resigned their memberships, along with approximately 263 other professors. But because of the Taylor Law, they are required to be represented by the PSC, which did not give evidence it could be fair in representing them. The PSC called them free riders, claiming their lawsuit was “meritless … funded by the notoriously right-wing National Right to Work Legal Foundation,” and described the “‘Right to Work’ agenda” as “rooted in white supremacy.”

    After lower courts ruled to dismiss their suit, the CUNY professors appealed to the Supreme Court, which just this month declined to hear their case. Yet, while this case could have been a victory for viewpoint diversity and free speech and an impetus for unions to get on the institutional neutrality bandwagon, future such suits will doubtless arise and reach a court favorable to their claims. Academic unions should get ahead of such a court ruling and make union membership attractive to all who may want to participate based on advocacy for improved working conditions, but not for particular solutions to international wars—or for wearing motorcycle helmets.

    Colleen P. Eren is a professor of sociology and criminal justice at William Paterson University and a research fellow at the Segal Center for Academic Pluralism. Her commentaries on higher ed and other topics can be found across a range of publications, including The New York Times, Discourse, Reason, and the Foundation for Economic Education.

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