This artificial intelligence (AI) Industry Insight focuses on the latest updates on the use of AI in the industry, from its use amongst postdoctoral researchers to how it is being used to create plain language summaries. We also discuss the ‘Science’ family of journals’ new editorial policies on image and text integrity.
Nature polled researchers about the use of AIin a global survey of postdocs. They found that 31% use chatbots, with almost half (43%) of those that use chatbots doing so on a weekly basis. The majority of this use is for refining text, code generation/editing/troubleshooting, and finding/summarising the literature. Other uses included preparing manuscripts and presentation materials.
12% of Americans are considered proficient in health literacy, according to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy. Despite this recognised need for easy to understand summaries of clinical trials, one study has found that plain language summaries were only available for 14% of completed trials. There has been increasing demand for plain language summaries that help distil the results of clinical trials in a way that can be easily understood.
TrialAssure’s AI technology has been able to include plain language summaries for every clinical trial posted on the National Institutes of Health’s ClinicalTrials.gov website since 2020. This is nearly 50,000 documents, or the equivalent of about one million work hours completed in less than one day. These are available on TrialResults.com
Earlier this year, the Science family of journals took a wait and see approach to the adoption of AI in generating research and scholarly content. However, the journal group has now adapted its editorial policies on image and text integrity. The key points from this are:
- AI-assisted technologies do not meet the criteria for authorship, and thus may not be listed as authors or co-authors. Sources cited cannot be authored or co-authored by AI tools
- Those who use AI-assisted technologies should note this in the cover letter and in acknowledgments section of manuscript
- Detailed information should be provided in the methods section, including the full prompt used and the AI tool and its version
- Reviewers may not use AI technology in generating or writing reviews
- AI-generated images and other multimedia are not permitted without explicit permission from the editors
