Member-only story
My First Encounter With AI-assisted Work
It’s best to disclose
I am the editor of an academic journal in education. When I read a recent submission, I realized that something was off with the language. As it was an international submission, I attributed it to a difference in writing style and started to provide suggestions to better match the journal’s style.
One sentence, for example, read: “Identifying and implementing anger management strategies and intervention methods is worthy of note.”
It wasn’t until I reached the end of the manuscript that I saw the authors' declaration that they used Scholar Chat-GPT by Open-AI to improve the readability and use of existing language. Aha! Now it made sense.
I checked the journal’s policy on AI. One was available for the use of AI for images, but a policy on AI-assisted writing was not available. The publishing company will have to eventually run an integrity check at some stage, but I am glad I wasn’t losing my mind in thinking that the language seemed a bit unconventional.
Now, I don’t know why the authors used an AI tool for writing. My best guess is that English is not their first language, and they wanted the assistance for readability purposes.
Disclosing that fact was the best thing they did. It served them well because their work will be accepted pending revisions.
