Emerald Publishing’s stance on AI tools and authorship

The release of the ChatGPT tool by OpenAI in San Francisco, towards the end of 2022, has stimulated a tidal wave of engagement across society, with a spectrum of emerging use-cases being put forward, both positive and potentially nefarious in nature.

There are already a range of applications of AI in use within the research and publishing sector, with applications including, amongst others, language editing, screening for potential research integrity issues, simulated student essays, summaries of research papers, and the use of AI tools as de facto research assistants.

There is understandable concern amongst academic institutions, researchers, academic editors and publishers that individuals or groups may try to pass off AI-generated work as their own original research, also resulting in incomplete and unreliable outputs.   In light of these developments, the publishing sector is stepping forward with policies and guidance in relation to the use of AI tools within the authoring and publication process.  Whilst industry standards will likely coalesce in the coming months, Emerald is adopting the following approach, as part of a watching brief on developments in the rapidly evolving AI space.

We acknowledge that the sophistication of AI tools will develop rapidly, and Emerald will continue to participate fully in the publishing sector’s development of best practice standards, policies and tools.  In the meantime,  we encourage authors, reviewers and editors to continue to work with us in the pursuit of research that retains the highest levels of integrity.

Tony Roche, Chief Officer Publishing & Strategic Relationships

Emerald Publishing has since updated its stance on the use of AI tools in relation to content creation and the peer review process, details of which can be found here.

ENDS