This week, the emergence of products created by artificial intelligence is disrupting the academic publishing industry, raising alarm bells about the risk of misinformation.

Two philosophy professors Tomasz Żuradzk and Leszek Wroński discovered three magazines under Addleton Academic Publishers that appeared to have most of their content created using generative AI (Gen AI). This is confirmed by the fact that the articles in these journals follow a common pattern, overusing common terms, and the editorial boards of all three journals are identical, consisting of 10 members who have passed away and used the same unknown address in Queens, New York.

The existence of these "ghost" journals not only affects the reputation of publishers but also exposes flaws in the research capacity evaluation system. The CiteScore system, one of the reputable metrics, ranks these journals in the top 10 for philosophical research because they consistently cite each other. This shows how easy it is to exploit the research assessment system for promotion and recruitment, potentially leading to similar risks in other knowledge professions.

According to professors Żuradzk and Wroński, if "ghost" journals and fake information are widespread, the reputation of the entire scientific research system will be shaken. Because, rankings like CiteScore are used to evaluate research quality and play an important role in decisions regarding academic awards, recruitment and promotion.

This technology can be used to create sophisticated fake articles, negatively affecting the reputation of genuine researchers and creating unfairness in capacity assessment. This requires a comprehensive restructuring of research assessment systems to ensure that they more accurately reflect real research quality and are not exploited by artificial content.

To deal with this risk, there needs to be synchronous solutions to prevent and handle cases of AI abuse in scientific research. Organizations and authorities need to raise awareness of this issue and build stricter control mechanisms for scientific publishing, ensuring transparency and honesty in research. In the long term, it is necessary to research and develop more effective tools to detect and prevent fake articles, protecting the reputation of the scientific research industry.

This is also a warning to the scientific research community about the potential risks from artificial AI. Ensuring the integrity and reputation of the research system is paramount to maintaining the sustainable development of science in the future.