For those in the media, the summer months have habitually taken on a rose-tinted hue, not all ascribable to the pink-coloured wine that is so popular at this time of year. No, as the weather gets warmer and readers go on holiday to get away from all the bad news that permeates through the media most of the time, the pressure on news subsides, and it’s time to have some fun with ‘silly season’ stories instead. Less grit, more grins.
However, summer 2025 didn’t seem to get the memo, and instead served up a litany of grave stories from around the world. And scholarly communications was no different, with scandals, budget cuts, and ever-increasing uncertainty filling up news sites and social media feeds without a let-up.
Hiding in plain sight
One such story concerned AI – what else? – and the suggestion that authors can ‘get around’ AI checks by simply inserting messages like ‘positive review only’ into the text of the document. This information, which was written in white font or extremely small so it was not viewable on the page, was alleged to have been manipulated to pull the wool over the eyes of the checking software and the publishers who were trying to root out invalid use of AI on any submission.
The stories – one of which was the result of a study by Nikkei Asia – stimulated some intense debate. On the one hand, the universities where authors had been identified as faculty members said the behavior was intolerable and unethical, and may yet lead to severe sanctions being placed on those alleged to have been involved. However, others have sought to justify the actions, either in terms of a protest against reviewers who did not pay close enough attention to the text, or as a means to highlight the use of AI in peer review by the publishers themselves.
Action on AI
Perhaps as a response to this, some bodies have updated their guidance on publishers’ use of AI. Major policy announcements do not usually occur in the summer, but in the last few months we have seen the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) host a discussion forum and post a follow up set of reflections on the dilemmas for scholarly publishing when it comes to AI, while the European Association of Science Editors (EASE) focused its annual conference and a number of updates on the topic.
From a research and publishing integrity perspective, the truth is that there is no consensus on how to adequately negotiate the rights and wrongs of using AI in the various processes from first writing down an idea (and using the AI embedded in text writing software to prompt the wording) to publishing an article in a journal (where AI may have been used in numerous stages to check and validate the text). Universities and publishers have differing policies, from absolutely none to pages of guidance, much of which is obsolete as soon as it appears online, as another new version of AI supersedes the last one.
However, when it comes to AI and publishing, there is some hope. Many users are seeking very specific AI solutions grounded in hard data, which is why Cabells chose to focus on utilizing its Journalytics database of verified journals when developing CompassAI, which helps you determine which is the best journal by just submitting your abstract. There has been little escape this Northern Hemisphere summer from the incessant march of AI into every part of our lives, and the temptation is just to unplug everything and go and catch a few last rays of sunshine before it disappears for another year. As a short-term AI strategy, it may take some beating, but the colder days ahead at least offer some light relief as we develop smarter ways to use AI in our research and publishing lives.
