ChatGPT and Corporations of Mega-journals Jeopardize the Norms That Underpin Academic Publishing

Abstract

Those who participate in and contribute to academic publishing are affected by its evolution. Funding bodies, academic institutions, researchers and peer-reviewers, junior scholars, freelance language editors, language-editing services, and journal editors are to enforce and uphold the ethical norms on which academic publishing is founded. Deviating from such norms will challenge and threaten the scholarly reputation, academic careers, and institutional standing; reduce the publishers’ true impacts; squander public funding; and erode the public trust to the academic enterprise. Rigorous review is paramount because peer-review norms guarantee that scientific findings are scrutinized before being publicized. Volunteer peer-reviewers and guest journal editors devote an immense amount of unremunerated time to reviewing papers, voluntarily serving the scientific community, and benefiting the publishers. Some mega-journals are motivated to mass-produce publications and attract the funded projects instead of maintaining the scientific rigor. The rapid development of mega-journals may diminish some traditional journals by outcompeting their impacts. Artificial intelligence (AI) tools/algorithms such as ChatGPT may be misused to contribute to the mass-production of publications which may have not been rigorously revised or peer-reviewed. Maintaining norms that guarantee scientific rigor and academic integrity enable the academic community to overcome the new challenges such as mega-journals and AI tools.