Abstract
Disclaimer: This Editor’s Forum was not written by AI.
I have decided to devote this entry of the Editor’s Forum to a few brief comments regarding the use of AI in writing and publishing. The topic has become ubiquitous among scholars in higher education, and it appears that students, teachers, editors, publishing companies, and so on are scrambling to identify what a “new normal” in the presence of AI might look like. It is truly astounding how impactful the emergence of so-called large-language models such as openAI’s “ChatGPT” have been in such a short period of time. Moreover, the pace at which such applications have grown and continue to grow in sophistication is perhaps even more astonishing. Debates about the merits of AI in academia are just beginning, and I admit that I vacillate between states of excitement and reticence when engaging in the topic. However, with respect to the Journal of Research in Music Education, it seems to me that two of the most pressing issues have to do with (a) how reviewers and/or editors might use AI to assist with their evaluations of manuscripts submitted for consideration and (b) whether and how authors might use AI within papers that are submitted for consideration.
The first issue is easier to speak to than the second. Authors who submit manuscripts to the JRME can be assured that their work is treated confidentially and that their intellectual property is considered with care. For example, the JRME peer-review process is doubly masked, meaning that reviewers are not aware of author identities and authors are not aware of reviewer identities. In addition, Editorial Committee members of the JRME are explicitly instructed not to use submitted materials for any purpose other than those relevant to their duties as a reviewer; nor should they discuss specific manuscripts that they are reviewing with anyone but the editor. Using AI to assist a review or editorial process would violate authors’ confidentiality and threaten their intellectual property rights because uploading any authors’ materials to an AI service would likely result in that information being added to the database the program uses to generate responses. Therefore, neither the Editor nor Editorial Committee members of the JRME should use AI in their peer-review work. Moreover, the JRME policy regarding the use of AI in peer review is consistent with that recommended by Sage and the American Psychological Association (APA; and likely other academic organizations).
Considerations of whether and how authors might use AI when crafting their submissions are somewhat more complex. At the moment, the JRME does not have a formal policy regarding authors’ use of AI, nor does there seem to be an “industry standard” across academic journals. For example, the array of publications associated with the Journal of the American Medical Association and the prominent journal Nature allow for the use of AI in text generation but require that authors disclose its use. They also emphasize that authors are responsible for the validity of any AI-generated content they use. In contrast, the journal Science does not allow for the use of AI at all.
The JRME has often adopted practices endorsed by the APA, which has approved policies allowing for the use of AI but also has suggested that its use be disclosed and that authors be required to provide the full output of what they generate via AI as supplemental material. 1 However, even if a journal were to allow for the use of AI, it seems authors should be extremely cautious when doing so. Anecdotally, it seems that it is quite easy for AI applications to generate problematic and/or invalid content (e.g., biased responses, false information, fabricated references). Developing a formal policy for how authors could or could not use AI for submissions to the JRME will be a priority for the Editorial Committee going forward. For now, it seems a reasonable way forward would be for authors to be as transparent as possible by disclosing any such use. In addition, authors who have questions about their use of AI should not hesitate to reach out to the Editor with any questions or concerns.
Working in academia during times of such drastic technological leaps is truly an exciting adventure!