Partnering with generative artificial intelligence to write: The future of academic publishing

Research Intelligence issue 159

Since the release of ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer), an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot developed by OpenAI and launched in November 2022, education professionals have ventured to explore the relationship between AI bots and the academic writing process. The extended use of AI has shed more light on the use of interactive text generators, but until very recently the incorporation of similar tools in academic writing in general remained largely unacknowledged. Researchers and practitioners have therefore identified the need to experiment with the implementation of AI applications like ChatGPT when authoring work and also from a pedagogic perspective. 

This issue of Research Intelligence, guest edited by Celia Antoniou, explores the knowledge and practice gap in understanding the impact of conversational AI and its potential in shaping academic writing and perceptions relating to a variety of topics. These topics include social justice (for example, race and AI in academic publishing, and AI and academic labour); the role of ChatGPT as an intelligent tutor and partner in the authoring of academic work; and the ethical principles and practices for employing AI technologies and applications in higher education.

Contributions to this issue:

• Mike Sharples examines the transformative impact of generative AI on academic publishing.
• Mariya Ivancheva reflects on the rise of AI in higher education and how it affects academic labour.
• Chrissi Nerantzi draws on her experience of co-creating a crowdsourced, openly licensed collection of generative AI experimentations by educators and students.
• Maha Bali synthesises the key dimensions of race in AI and considers how to approach AI in an anti-racist manner.
• Howard Scott amplifies generative AI in research as a pedagogical innovation which emphasises the part of process over product in research.
• Thomas Lancaster considers the implications of the generative AI revolution for academic integrity.

Elsewhere in this issue:

• BERA announces the launch of the fifth edition of its Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research, and Alison Fox shares insights into the process of reviewing the guidelines and producing the new edition.
• The winning team of the 2023 BERA Public Engagement and Impact Award, the Effective Provision of Preschool, Primary and Secondary Education (EPPSE) study team at the University of Oxford, highlight the significant influence of their work in the policy and practice landscape of early years education.
• In a special feature celebrating BERA’s 50th anniversary:
  • Chief Executive, Nick Johnson, reflects on BERA’s growth during the 1980s and 1990s as it became an increasingly confident association in the years leading up to its 25th anniversary in 1999.
  • Michael Bassey (BERA President, 1991–92) shares his personal memories of BERA at the end of the 20th century.
  • From BERA’s archive, we uncover a letter signed by 11 BERA presidents expressing concern at the pattern of funding for educational research in the late 1980s and an extract from a 1996 issue of Research Intelligence arguing that social research is essential for democracy.
• The Inner World of Gatekeeping in Scholarly Publication, edited by Pejman Habibie and Anna Kristina Hultgren, is reviewed in this issue’s book feature.
• John Benedicto Krejsler writes about how universities and primary and lower secondary schools have been radically transformed since the turn of the millennium in Denmark.
• Janine Pavlis offers perspectives on navigating motherhood and educational research in the Early Career Researcher Network feature.