Balkan Medical Journal Policy on the Use of Chatbots in Scientific Publications

Abstract

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in scientific publishing is not new. In 2005, three students at MIT developed SCIgen, a computer program that automatically generates nonsense computer science articles to get rid of spam emails and take revenge on predatory publishers. Just 9 years later, the scientific world was shaken by the shocking news that the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and Springer withdrew more than 100 papers identified as being produced through SCIgen.1 The recent rapid increase in the use of AI in science and publishing necessitates publishing industry stakeholders to have knowledge and experience on these issues. In addition, the free launch of the ChatGPT chatbot by OpenAI a few months ago caused great excitement in the scientific world. What is a chatbot? A chatbot is “a computer program that simulates and processes human conversation (either written or spoken), allowing humans to interact with digital devices as if they were communicating with a real person”.2 ChatGPT as a chatbot is considered one of the most powerful language models available today. It can understand context and produce text and abstracts so well that scientists have difficulty recognizing that a computer wrote them.

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