Abstract
A Singular Disruption of Scientific Publishing—AI Proliferation and Blurred Responsibilities of Authors, Reviewers, and Editors
Isaac Kohane1,2
Importance
The full cycle from manuscript creation through review and then distribution is currently a heavily human-intensive process. If the continually increasing capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) can replace much of that human effort, the economics, quality, culture, and reproducibility of scientific publishing will be dramatically affected internationally.
Observations
AI is entering into the reviewing process in a few journals. This is going to accelerate rapidly. It will perform higher-quality reviews than a larger majority of the current batch of reviewers. Authorship, including what used to be considered as intellectual contributions, will be broadly extended to AI. This may have as much impact on the consequences for institutional promotion as for the publication process. Reviews for reproducibility and accuracy are highly likely to become ubiquitous comprehensive processes rather than the artisanal passion project of a few. Gamesmanship of citation networks as currently practiced will become easily unraveled.
Conclusions
AI is going to affect all aspects of the scientific process. Because it impinges on roles for which we attributed respect, financial reward, and trust, the current publishing process is going to be transformed within the decade. Who will lead the transformation depends on a few critical decisions we make in the next 1 to 2 years.
1Department of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, US, isaac_kohane@hms.harvard.edu; 2NEJM AI, Waltham, MA, US.
Conflict of Interest Disclosures
None reported.