Academic Publishing Faces Challenges in Era of Climate Change, Artificial Intelligence

October 10, 2023

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Academic Publishing Faces Challenges in Era of Climate Change, Artificial Intelligence — Researchers and journal editors are discussing best practices for dealing with the challenges that scholarly publishing faces today. (Freepik).

Academic publishing is coming under mounting challenges from controversies over the use of artificial intelligence in the article-review process and political claims of bias in climate-change research. Both researchers and editors at prestigious scientific journals are engaged in ongoing debates about these challenges.

We can benefit from those debates by highlighting the following points:

1. Pressure on Researchers to Publish.

Researchers face great pressure to publish as quickly as possible for several reasons, including:

The need to fund their research. Researchers rely heavily on external funding to support their research, and frequent publishing is one means of attracting grant-making organisations’ attention.
The need to advance their careers. Many institutions use the number of published research articles as an indicator of researchers’ talent and productivity, which may affect their employment and promotion chances.
The need to maintain their reputation as researchers. The more researchers publish regularly, the more they share a good academic reputation as efficient and productive scholars.

Artificial intelligence is expected to cause dramatic changes in the peer-review process. Using AI tools to help evaluate the originality, quality and rigour of research raises concerns about the accuracy of the tools and the potential for job losses.

Such pressures can push researchers to make inappropriate decisions, such as publishing incomplete research or in unreliable journals.

2. Editors’ Bias.

Some journal editors are accused of being biased toward research that supports their own point of view. This bias arises from several factors, including:

The editor’s scientific background. Editors may be more interested in research that supports their own theories or hypotheses.
The editor’s personal attitudes. This means that editors’ bias regarding certain issues may influence their decisions about which papers to publish.

3. The Impact of Artificial Intelligence.

Artificial intelligence is expected to cause dramatic changes in the peer-review process, through the use of AI tools to help evaluate the originality, quality and rigour of research. This may result in new challenges, such as:

Concerns about the accuracy of AI tools. Artificial intelligence may not be able to accurately assess the quality of research, which will lead to publishing inaccurate research.
Job losses. Using AI tools to do some of the jobs that human reviewers traditionally have done could result in journals’ hiring fewer reviewers, or replacing them altogether.

4. The Importance of Peer Review.

Peer review is the practice of having scientific research reviewed by experts in the same field, to evaluate its quality and accuracy. Peer review is the best way to ensure the significance and quality of research published in periodicals and journals, for several reasons, including:

Ensuring accuracy. Peer reviewers can detect mistakes, including statistical ones or misinterpretations of data.
Improving research quality. Peer reviewers provide feedback to a study’s authors on how to improve their research methods and the quality of their manuscripts.
Ensuring transparency. Peer review can ensure transparency in academic publishing, by providing the opportunity for other researchers to evaluate published research.

The value of such transparency was illustrated in a recent controversy over a study that found that human-caused climate warming had increased the frequency of California wildfires. The study’s lead author later claimed that the research team had been under pressure to omit consideration of other factors in order to get the paper published in the journal Nature.

But Nature was able to debunk that claim. It published a summary of the peer review file, which showed that reviewers had questioned the study’s narrow focus and suggested expanding it. The study’s authors rejected that suggestion.

Debates about the challenges for academic publishing in the era of climate change and artificial intelligence can provide an opportunity for readers and researchers to understand and benefit from such challenges.

“Hence, it is clear that the authors themselves argued against expanding their analysis to factors other than temperature” and “were not pressured by the journal to do so”, the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, based at the London School of Economics and Political Science, wrote in an analysis of the case.

5. Best Practices in Publishing Research.

Before publishing, researchers must ensure that their research is complete and of high quality. They must be careful to publish their research in reliable periodicals or journals. New researchers and doctoral students must be aware of the challenges they will face in academic publishing and seek advice from experienced colleagues.

Here are some practices that researchers can follow to improve their chances of successfully publishing their research:

Ensure that the research is complete and of high quality before submitting it, by carefully reviewing it and making any necessary amendments.
Ensure that the research is published in reliable scientific journals, by verifying the journal’s classification and publishing standards.
Consult experienced researchers on the best way to successfully publish their research.

In conclusion, we find that debates about the challenges of academic publishing in the era of climate change and artificial intelligence can provide an opportunity for readers and researchers to understand and benefit from such challenges, to understand the importance of maintaining quality standards in scientific publishing, and to move towards best practices in publishing research and dealing with current and future challenges.

Tarek Kapiel is an assistant professor of biotechnology in the Faculty of Science at Cairo University. You can contact him at [email protected]