Hi readers! here is me Shafqat Farooq. Back after the gap of three months as I was first in US and then from June onward, busy with house renovation. But as per saying “all is well if ends well” all went well, and the routine starts again.
Dear readers! If you could recall, I have written several blogs and about a dozen of vlogs on this topic then what prompted me to write this again? Let me explain this.
In March this year, I received an email message with a link ArticlesSubmitContatc (by clicking this you can see the email address of the sender) mentioning a paper titled
“Addressing Reviewer Misconduct in Scholarly Publishing: MDPI’s Proactive Steps”
You can visit the website and read the details but, the paper in question is no more available on its website therefore, I could not read it in full but that reminded me another incident like of this that happened during 2023 which created hue and cry in the realm of scholarly publication. It was related to some papers published by Elsevier (a prominent academic publisher) on the use of AI powered tools in writing scientific papers and the review procedure.
Elsevier took notice of this and has now taken policy measures to tackle the issue regarding the use of generative AI and related tools/technologies in scientific writing.
Please read the key points at the following link
Let me summarize the key points from their policy.
I have gone through some of the details coming out of Elsevier and MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute) publisher of open-access scientific journals especially on the use of AI tools and have reached to the point that:
All the confusion about AI and AI powered tools like Chat GPT and copilot is dancing around our ignorance and illiteracy about AI powered tools, their status and how and where they are being used?
What Chat GPT can and can’t do?
What are ethical and unethical uses? Some are using it knowingly and some unknowingly.
Misuse of peer-review reports, primarily through the submission of templated reports and the negligence of the reviewers and review procedures to check and control this misuse is also not known to the people even in the higher seats of learning.
Manipulation of citations to include irrelevant or self-cited references and citation process based on “you scratch my back and scratch yours” is a never ending and mysterious process confusing the general readers as it has spread like a pandemic in the academic institutions.
(if you carefully read the reports issued recently on fraud in scholarly publications you will grab the crux).
However, readers are still unable to understand what is there to make hue and cry simply because they don’t really understand what these tools are and how they are being used and/or misused in scholarly publications and how there misuse can be checked and control?
This is what prompted me to write a new series of blogs explaining in easy words what is AI powered tools like
What is Chat GPT?
How many versions of chat GPT are available?
How does Chat GPT work?
How and where Chat GPT is being used?
Effective and ethical use of ChatGPT in academic writing?
Some questions that people usually ask about ChatGPT?
The benefits of using chat GPT etc., and its utilization in writing scholarly papers, essays, reports, and projects. The same will also be explained in Urdu in my vlogs.
So, Let’s have the first blog, but for that stay tuned till next week.
Take Care, Bye
