17 Best AI for Research Papers

Research papers can be a real challenge for students. Gathering relevant information, organizing ideas, and starting writing are common hurdles. AI tools can help you overcome them all. In this guide, we’ll explore the benefits of AI for students and showcase the best AI for research papers to help you write and research efficiently.

Otio’s AI research and writing partner can help you get started with your following research paper. The tool helps students write better papers by streamlining the research and writing processes, putting them on the path to success. 

Table Of Contents

• Can You Write Research Papers Using AI?

• How to Use AI For Research Papers

• 17 Best AI for Research Papers

• Best Practices for Using AI For Research Papers

• Supercharge Your Researching Ability With Otio — Try Otio for Free Today

Can You Write Research Papers Using AI?

Artificial intelligence has profoundly changed how we work on academic research, including writing research papers. AI-powered tools can assist in drafting, editing, and refining manuscripts, which enhances efficiency and productivity. However, it’s essential to recognize both the benefits and potential pitfalls associated with AI in academic writing. 

Benefits of Using AI in Research Paper Writing

Enhanced Efficiency 

AI tools can automate time-consuming tasks such as literature reviews, data analysis, and even the drafting of paper sections. This allows researchers to focus more on their work's conceptual and analytical aspects. 

Improved Language 

AI-driven grammar and style checkers can help non-native English speakers produce well-written manuscripts, ensuring clarity and coherence. 

Data Analysis Assistance 

AI algorithms can process large datasets swiftly, identifying patterns and trends that might be overlooked manually. This capability is particularly beneficial in fields requiring extensive data interpretation. 

Idea Generation 

AI can assist in brainstorming research questions or hypotheses by analyzing existing literature and suggesting unexplored areas. 

Real-Life Examples 

ChatGPT in Academic Writing: 

ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, has generated introductory sections and abstracts for scientific articles. Some papers have even listed ChatGPT as a co-author, highlighting its significant contribution to the writing process. 

PaperCard Framework 

Researchers have proposed frameworks like "PaperCard" to document and transparently declare the use of AI in the academic writing process, ensuring ethical standards are maintained. 

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How to Use AI For Research Papers

Understanding Your Assignment: The First Step to Writing a Research Paper with AI

Before writing your research paper, you must understand the assignment thoroughly. The first step is to read the prompt or question provided by your instructor multiple times. Doing this will ensure you understand all components of the assignment. Next, identify the overall goal of the research paper. Is it meant to analyze a specific topic, argue a particular stance, or present findings from an investigation? 

Understanding the purpose will steer the direction of your research and dictate the structure of your paper. Finally, note any specific requirements that have been provided, such as the expected length of the paper, word count or page limit, formatting guidelines (such as font size, margins, and citation style), and any unclear or ambiguous aspects of the assignment. 

Ask your instructor for clarification if you have any questions about the research paper. It's also beneficial to inquire about expectations regarding research sources, such as whether scholarly articles, books, or primary sources are preferred and the depth of analysis required for the paper. This will help you align your research and writing with the assignment's expectations. Artificial intelligence can help you understand your assignment and even compose a detailed outline for your research paper.

Choosing a Topic: Narrow Your Focus for Research Paper Success

If your instructor has not assigned a specific topic, you must choose one yourself. It's best to select a topic you're passionate about, as it will set the stage for your entire project and can significantly impact your enthusiasm, engagement, and success. Here are some tips to guide you: Start by brainstorming ideas. Begin by brainstorming potential topics that interest you or relate to the assignment's subject area and your field of study. 

Consider recent developments, controversies, or unanswered questions within the field that intrigue you. Next, narrow down your focus. Review your list of ideas and narrow it down to a specific research question or thesis statement. Avoid overly broad topics; aim for a focused and manageable research scope. Consider the relevance of these ideas to your field: Evaluate the significance of each potential topic to the course or subject area. 

Choose a significant topic within the academic community or real-world context. Finally, review existing literature for inspiration. Conduct preliminary research to identify existing literature on your potential topics. Determine if enough scholarly materials are available to support your research and provide context for your study. By doing so, you can avoid starting to write and then realizing that more evidence or facts are needed to support your research. 

Conducting Research: AI Can Help You Find Relevant Information Fast

Before delving into conducting research, it's essential to clarify the specific objectives of your study. Determine the questions you seek to answer or the hypotheses you are testing. Establishing clear research goals will guide your search for relevant information and help focus your study. Next, knowing where to look for information is crucial when conducting research. Artificial intelligence can help you scour vast information databases to find credible and relevant sources for your research paper. 

Expand your search beyond traditional academic journals to include books, government publications, conference proceedings, and reputable websites. Finally, consider primary and secondary sources (original research or data) (interpretations or analyses of existing research) to gather comprehensive insights into your chosen topic. This broad approach will enrich your understanding and support the development of your research paper.

Take Note of Interesting Facts: Organize Information for Your Research Paper

When conducting research, it's essential to identify and note the most exciting facts or findings that capture your attention. Here's a guide on effectively noting intriguing information during your research process: Record key details you discover. Write down the most relevant information about each exciting fact, including the source (author, publication, website), date, and context. Organize your notes by topic, source, or relevance to easily retrieve interesting facts later. Note the significance of the point and why it stood out to you concerning your research topic. 

Don't just put it down vaguely. Include brief comments or thoughts alongside the highlighted information to provide context or explain its relevance. Organize these facts by themes or categories: Categorize exciting facts based on common themes, topics, or research questions. Create separate sections or folders within your note-taking system to facilitate easy retrieval and organization. As you write your research paper, you may discover that some exciting facts become essential to supporting your arguments or providing context for your findings. 

Organize your notes effectively to ensure easy retrieval of these facts during the writing process. Instead of searching through all your notes to find a specific detail, maintain a well-organized system where you can quickly locate relevant information when needed. This approach will streamline your writing process and enhance the coherence and impact of your research paper.

Developing a Thesis Statement: This AI-Approved Step Will Help Focus Your Paper

Your thesis statement serves as the central idea or main point of your research paper and guides it. It presents the topic of your paper and articulates your position or argument concisely and clearly. To create a strong AI-approved thesis statement, refine your research topic into a specific research question or issue that someone can address within the scope of your paper. Ensure that your thesis statement is specific and focused, addressing a particular aspect of the topic. Crafting a concise and compelling thesis statement is crucial for your research paper. Your thesis should clearly outline your paper's central argument or purpose and be specific, debatable, and directly tied to your research question.

Creating an Outline: Organize Your Research Paper with AI

Creating a well-structured outline is essential for organizing your thoughts, planning the flow of your research paper, and ensuring coherence and logical progression. Here's how you can go about it: Familiarize yourself with the standard components of a research paper outline, which typically include an introduction, Body paragraphs (with subtopics or main points), and Conclusion Select a suitable outline format based on your preference or your assignment's requirements. 

Determine the main sections of your research paper that will form the basis of your outline. Each section should correspond to a significant aspect of your paper, such as the introduction, literature review, methodology results, discussion, and conclusion. Arrange the main points logically, ensuring a coherent progression of ideas and precise transitions between sections. Incorporate subheadings and subtopics. 

Organize subtopics hierarchically to reflect the relationship between different ideas and concepts. Outline the supporting evidence, examples, or data that someone will use to substantiate each main point or argument. Ensure that each piece of evidence directly supports the corresponding argument and contributes to the overall coherence of the paper. 

Get to Writing: The Time Is Now to Start Drafting Your Research Paper

The best way to write a research paper is by utilizing the practice of writing with your research document open. It involves referencing your research materials, such as notes, outlines, sources, and data while drafting your research document. Here's a detailed guide on effectively integrating research into your writing process. 

Ensure that your research documents, notes, and sources are readily accessible while you write. Keep them open or easily accessible on your computer or workspace. Use your outline to structure your writing and organize critical points and sections. Continuously refer to your outline to ensure it focuses on your research paper's main objectives and flow. 

Incorporate relevant research findings, evidence, quotes, and data into your writing to support your arguments and assertions. Always cite your sources accurately using the appropriate citation style (e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago) as you integrate information from your research. Compare different perspectives and interpretations in your research as you write to provide a comprehensive analysis and discussion of the topic. 

Let Otio be your AI research and writing partner—try Otio for free today!

17 Best AI for Research Papers

1. Otio 

Otio is a research tool designed to help students, researchers, and academics deal with information overload.  Otio provides an AI-native workspace that helps users collect, organize, and extract insights from web-based research. Key features include Collecting and organizing research from various sources, including PDFs, websites, YouTube videos, and social media. AI-generated notes and read summaries for all research files. Chat-based Q&A for extracting insights and research details and drafting written outputs like reports and essays based on collected research. 

Otio helps users go from the reading list to the first draft faster. Along with this, Otio also enables you to write research papers/essays faster. Here are our top features that researchers love: AI-generated notes on all bookmarks (Youtube videos, PDFs, articles, etc.), Otio enables you to chat with individual links or entire knowledge bases, just like you chat with ChatGPT, as well as AI-assisted writing. 

Let Otio be your AI research and writing partner—try Otio for free today!

2. QuillBot

QuillBot isn’t a traditional research tool, but its AI-powered paraphrasing features can benefit students and researchers. First, it helps users better understand complex research by rephrasing texts differently. This is a good way for researchers to gain perspective on their own work by finding more straightforward ways to word it. QuillBot also helps users avoid unintentional plagiarism by rephrasing sentences for those summarizing source material in their research. That said, checking the facts before including content in research is always a good idea. 

Pros

• Multiple Paraphrasing Modes: QuillBot offers different paraphrasing modes, allowing you to tailor rephrased content to suit your needs.  

• Grammar and Plagiarism Tools (Paid plans only): QuillBot’s premium plan provides a grammar checker to identify and fix errors and a plagiarism detector to ensure research is original.  

• Summarize Lengthy Text: This is the biggest perk for researchers as it can help condense more extensive amounts of text, making it easier to grasp.  

• Extensions For Google, MacOS, and Microsoft Word: Paraphrase and summarize on the go, thanks to mobile apps and browser extensions. 

Cons

• No Fact Checking: Since QuillBot is mainly a summarization and paraphrasing tool, it doesn’t have a way to verify the information. Therefore, it’s essential to ensure factual accuracy in your research.

3. Writefull Academized 

Writefull Academizer is an AI-powered tool designed to improve the quality of academic and scientific writing. It helps authors and editors refine their texts to meet high standards. Its AI system provides language feedback, using big data to deliver high-quality results. The platform also includes a paraphrasing tool to reframe sentences and avoid plagiarism. The Academizer's AI-assisted proofreading capabilities help users refine their writing, save time, and increase productivity. Its automated proofreading feature provides AI-driven language feedback, improving grammar, punctuation, and style. Additionally, the platform's AI content detection feature detects AI-generated text. 

Pros

• Seamless Integration: Writefull’s compatibility with popular writing platforms, such as Microsoft Word and Overleaf, ensures a smooth experience for users.  

• Time-saving Features: The time-saving capabilities of Writefull are impressive. The Writefull Cite feature simplifies the citation process, and the AI-generated suggestions save time during the editing and proofreading stages.  

• Accurate AI-generated Suggestions: Overall, the AI-generated suggestions provided by Writefull are accurate and helpful in improving writing quality.  

• Free: Most basic features of Writefull, such as installation for Word and Overleaf, are available at no cost.  

Cons

• Occasional Limitations in AI Suggestions: One of the downsides of Writefull is the occasional inaccuracy in AI-generated suggestions.  

• GPT-Detector Accuracy: Another area where Writefull could improve is the accuracy of its GPT-Detector feature.  

• Limited Appeal for Non-Academic Writers: Writefull’s primary focus on academic writing may limit its appeal to content writers in other fields.  

4. Bit AI

Bit AI is an AI program designed to help teams collaborate on documents, wikis, and knowledge bases. It goes beyond just text and images, allowing users to create interactive documents containing videos, cloud files, and audio. It works much like Google Drive, allowing for real-time collaboration on documents. Multiple people can work on documents simultaneously and chat with one another within the interface.  

Pros

• Built-In AI Writing Assistant: AI Genius is the perfect tool for generating documents, wikis, and other information based on a text prompt.  

• Multiple Use Cases: Bit AI is great for researchers and marketers, as well as for product management, startups, and human resources due to its document development features.  

• Collaboration Tools: Bit.ai allows multiple users to collaborate on documents, notes, wikis, and other content in real-time.  

• Wide Range of Integrations: Bit AI integrates with many third-party tools, including YouTube, Google Sheets, Figma, and GitHub.  

Cons

• Limited Customizations: Bit AI would be better if it had text formatting or options to customize the appearance of documents, such as matching company branding.  

5. PaperPal 

Paperpal is an AI-driven tool designed to assist the academic writing process. It uses artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to help scholars, researchers, and students improve their writing. Paperpal offers language suggestions, grammar checks, and academic writing conventions. Its AI-based solution uses machine learning models learned from language suggestions made by professional copyeditors across millions of research articles. 

Pros

• Enhanced writing clarity  

• Seamless integration options  

• Comprehensive editing tools  

Cons

• Steep learning curve  

• Limited template variety  

• Occasional software bugs  

6. Scite 

Scite is an AI tool for research that uses artificial intelligence to enhance how researchers discover and analyze scientific articles. It goes beyond traditional citation counts by providing a tool called Smart Citations. Using AI, Scite analyzes the context in which an article is referenced, revealing whether the citing paper supports, contradicts, or mentions the earlier work. Scite’s vast database, which contains over 1.2 billion citations, allows researchers to understand better the conversation surrounding a particular subject. Scite provides the most relevant content for your research by taking this approach, saving time and effort. 

Pros

• Smart Citations: Scite analyzes how an article is referenced in other research. It can tell if the citing article supports, contradicts, or mentions the original article.  

• Citation Context: Scite shows you how different sections of an article are being cited in other research, which helps you to understand how the original research is being used and interpreted by other researchers.  

• Citation Reports: Generates reports that show citation patterns and trends, which helps users to identify articles and authors in a related field.  

• Large Dataset: Scite was training on more than 187 million articles, books, preprints, and other datasets, making it a solid choice for researchers.  

Cons

• Not All Articles Cited Are Accessible: Although Scite offers full-text access for most articles cited, some publishers have not.  

7. SciSpace Paraphraser 

SciSpace Paraphraser is a powerful tool designed to help writers and researchers refine their academic writing. It offers advanced language enhancement features to improve the clarity and quality of your writing. SciSpace Paraphraser's AI-powered writing assistant provides real-time suggestions and feedback to improve your writing skills. It goes beyond traditional grammar and spelling tools, offering comprehensive language, style, and structure assistance. The tool also includes a built-in AI detector feature to identify and humanize AI-written content. 

Pros

• SciSpace Literature Review: Accelerates the literature search and review process with detailed insights and customizable filter options like TL, DR, summaries, etc.    

• SciSpace AI Assistance: Offers real-time explanations for text, mathematical equations, and tables, a feature not commonly found in SciSpace alternatives.  

• Ease of Use: The SciSpace AI platform and tools are pretty simple for literature review, writing, and formatting.  

Cons  

• No Integration with MS Word: SciSpace doesn’t work with MS Word and converting text to Word documents often leads to distorted equations and incorrect references, requiring significant manual adjustments.  

• Limited Free Features: SciSpace may not be the best option for budget-conscious users because its advanced features offer restricted access, for example, unlike popular SciSpace alternatives like Paperpal, which offers unlimited citation generation for free, SciSpace limits the number of citations generated in the free version.  

8. PDFGear CoPilot 

PDFgear Copilot, an AI-powered assistant, extracts and summarizes information in PDF documents. It utilizes OpenAI’s ChatGPT language model to help users locate important information in documents while conducting research. It lets you chat with a document, ask questions about its contents, and quickly summarize entire PDFs.  

Pros

• Interact With PDFs: Summarize, analyze, and interact with PDF content through natural language processing.  

• ChatGPT Integration: Find key information and get answers using built-in ChatGPT functionality.  

• Streamline PDF Workflows: Complete tasks, such as converting, printing, and saving PDFs with natural language processing.  

• Support for Multiple Languages: PDFgear Copilot supports over 100 languages, making it accessible to many users.  

Cons

• No Dark Mode: PDFgear cannot switch to dark mode, potentially alienating those who prefer it.  

9. Wordvice.AI 

Wordvice AI is a writing checker app that helps students, researchers, and business professionals improve their writing. It offers a range of features to enhance language. Wordvice AI's writing assistant provides real-time feedback to improve writing skills. It goes beyond traditional grammar and spelling tools, offering comprehensive language, style, and structure assistance. 

Pros

• Offers real-time grammar and style corrections  

• Provides multiple editing modes for different writing needs  

• Includes AI-powered paraphrasing and translation features  

• Affordable pricing options compared to some competitors  

Cons

• Limited feedback on overall document structure and flow  

• Customer service response times could be improved  

10. Consensus 

Consensus is an AI-powered search engine that provides users unbiased and accurate information from diverse and reliable academic sources. It can search through millions of scholarly publications to find relevant information to answer questions, provide references, and cite research studies. It uses GPT-4 technology to generate concise summaries of the top research papers related to your search. When asking a yes or no question, the Consensus Meter can provide an overall summary indicating the consensus among research and categorize it with yes, no, or possibly based on supporting evidence.  

Pros

• AI-Powered Academic Search: Consensus uses AI to quickly analyze millions of peer-reviewed research papers and provide comprehensive, accurate answers to users’ questions.  

• Scientifically-Verified Results: Consensus only consults previously published scholarly works from leading global journals and authors, ensuring reliable and unbiased information.  

• Fast and Reliable Search: The AI-powered search allows users to quickly find the most critical insights on a topic, saving time compared to traditional research methods.  

• GPT-4 Summary: Consensus leverages GPT-4 to deliver concise summaries of the top 5-10 most relevant research findings for a given question.  

Cons

• The Consensus Meter: Although the consensus is usually accurate, there may be times when the meter does not capture the specific nuance and context of research findings.  

11. Jenni AI 

Jenni AI is a powerful tool designed to improve the quality and clarity of academic writing. It offers a range of features to assist writers in refining their work. Jenni AI's AI-assisted proofreading capabilities provide real-time feedback to improve writing skills. The tool goes beyond traditional grammar and spelling checks, offering comprehensive language, style, and structure assistance. 

Pros

• Grammar correction: Jenni AI can help correct grammatical errors.  

• Citation assistance: Jenni AI can automatically cite sources from your research library.  

• Plagiarism checker: Jenni AI has a built-in plagiarism checker.  

• Translation support: Jenni AI can translate content into five languages.  

Cons

• Paraphrasing: Paraphrasing can change the meaning of complex ideas, leading to confusion.  

• Citation accuracy: Citation accuracy may vary depending on the complexity of the research topic.  

12. Connected Papers 

Connected Papers is an innovative research tool that helps scientists and scholars efficiently explore relevant literature by providing a visual, similarity-based mapping of related academic papers. It uses circles to represent different papers. The size of the circle corresponds to the frequency of citations by other researchers. Papers that closely resemble the original paper you provided are positioned closer together and connected by lines. The thickness of the line indicates the strength of the relationship between the documents. By following the connections between papers, you can use Connected Papers to explore new research areas within your field. 

Pros

• Similarity Graphs: Connected Papers produces a visual graph displaying related papers. However, unlike a traditional citation tree, it emphasizes semantic similarity, meaning that documents with shared citations and references are more connected.  

• Prior and Derivative Works: Connected Papers identifies influential prior works that have shaped the current research landscape. Additionally, it can reveal derivative works that build upon the original paper’s ideas.  

• Multi-Origin Graphs: You can enter multiple papers as a starting point so that CP can create a combined graph highlighting their relationships.  

• Save Papers and Graphs: Save papers and graphs to revisit and explore topics further.  

Cons

• Limited Citation View: Unlike citation trees, Connected Papers doesn’t directly show how papers cite each other.  

13. Elephas 

Elephas is an AI writing assistant designed to improve writing speed and quality across various Apple devices, including Mac, iPhone, and iPad. This tool works seamlessly across multiple applications, allowing users to generate a wide range of content. Elephas' AI-assisted proofreading capabilities go beyond traditional grammar and spelling checks. The tool provides real-time feedback to improve writing skills, including suggestions for improving clarity, coherence, and overall writing style. 

Pros

• AI tools Elephas offers a variety of AI tools and features.  

• Mac integration Elephas integrates well with Mac.  

• Personalized assistance Elephas provides personalized AI assistance to help users write faster and better.  

Cons 

• UI Some say the user interface (UI) feels clunky and lackluster.  

14. LitMaps 

Litmaps is a literature mapping tool that helps researchers discover new and relevant research papers, visualize the relationships between papers, and share their research. It works by using connectedness theory, which allows researchers to quickly scan Litmap’s network of academic papers around the documents they know, discovering vital related papers they may not know about. Litmaps can also generate reading lists and notify users when relevant new papers are published, making it easier to stay up-to-date on the latest research.  

Pros

• Search Academic Papers: Litmaps allows you to search through a vast database of over 260 million academic papers to find relevant articles.  

• Mind Mapping: Litmaps lets you visualize your research by creating a map of interconnected articles and annotating them for better understanding.  

• Explore Research From Various Angles: Dynamic Exploration allows users to explore research from different angles by rearranging how papers are positioned on the map.  

• Collaboration Features: The platform allows you to share your research maps with colleagues, students, or advisors to facilitate collaboration.  

Cons

• Limited Free Plan: Some features, like unlimited searches, are only available on paid plans.  

15. LumenWriter 

LumenWriter is an AI-based tool designed to improve academic writing. It generates content, researches, and organizes ideas into clear, logical, and well-structured papers. LumenWriter has received positive feedback from its users, who appreciate its ability to help them overcome writer's block and structure their findings into coherent academic papers. Its user-friendly interface makes it an ideal tool for students and researchers seeking to enhance their writing skills.  

Pros

• LumenWriter reduces the complexity of the writing process.  

• Appropriate for different types of academic assignments and disciplines.  

• It can help with writer’s block.  

Cons

• The complete set of features is only available for premium plan customers.  

• It is expensive.  

16. Jenni AI 

The following AI tool for research on our list is Jenni. It’s an AI-powered writing assistant designed to help students and researchers with academic writing tasks. It uses machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to provide content suggestions, writing feedback, and research assistance. It’s beneficial for writing essays, research papers, literature reviews, and more. Jenni can also help with citations and references and check for plagiarism. 

Pros

• AskJenni: Use an AI research assistant that can help answer research questions and provide document-related clarifications.  

• Citation and Reference Assistance: Jenni can properly format citations and references in styles like APA, MLA, and Chicago.  

• AI Commands: Jenni can perform tasks like paraphrasing, rewriting, and simplifying existing text.  

• AI Autocompletion: Jenni can suggest and complete sentences to help you write faster.  

Cons

• Limited Content Types: Compared to other AI writing tools like Copy.ai and Jasper, Jenni.ai only offers a limited number of content types, such as blogs, essays, emails, and free-flow writing.  

17. Research Rabbit 

Research Rabbit is a free web-based tool that helps users discover and organize academic research. Users can create collections of research papers and get access to recommendations for similar works. Users can visualize the connections between research papers through graphs and timelines, allowing users to trace the evolution of a particular area of research.  

Pros

• Intuitive Exploration: Research Rabbit allows users to easily create collections of papers and discover new, relevant publications through personalized recommendations.  

• Powerful Visualizations: Offers interactive visualizations like citation networks and timelines to aid users in grasping the connections among publications and authors.  

• Collaboration Features: Users can share collections and collaborate, leaving comments and helping kickstart each other’s research processes.  

• Citation Management: Research Rabbit supports citation management, allowing users to generate citations in various styles and organize their references quickly.  

Cons

• Navigation challenges: The cluttered interface may be complicated for some.

Best Practices for Using AI For Research Papers

Choose Wisely for Your Protection

Before using any AI tools, take the time to assess the capabilities, limitations, and terms of service of the generative AI tools of choice.  Select the tools that best fit your research task and meet your ethical standards. In the same way that you might prefer fair trade coffee or sustainably made products, you may prefer to use products that are, or claim, to be “responsible AI.” This point will be revisited below in the section on organizational best practices. Terms of service include copyright, privacy, data ownership rights, and use of your data by the third-party GenAI provider.  For example, to protect the privacy of your data, you should understand how to access, control, and delete your data from the third-party GenAI provider. Unclear, ambiguous, or exploitative terms of service should be rejected. Several third-party GenAI providers can opt out of data sharing and tracking history – use them! 

Respect the Context for Dissemination in Your Community 

Consider the publications ethics guidance for the journal or professional society where you plan to publish your work (e.g., Ganjavi et al., 2024).  Consider the criteria for the particular venue for juried exhibitions. Follow the guidance for your specific context. For example, in June 2024, Springer Nature’s editorial policies on AI Authorship stated that Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, do not qualify as authors but should be documented appropriately in the Methods section of the manuscript. 

Generative AI images are not allowed unless obtained from agencies with which they have a contractual relationship and have created images in a “legally acceptable manner.”  As another example, as part of its publication ethics policy, Elsevier’s AI author policy states that authors are allowed to use generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process before submission, but “only to improve the language and readability of their paper and with the appropriate disclosure,” per the Elsevier’s Guide for Authors. 

Editors should not upload a submitted manuscript into a generative AI tool, even to improve language and readability. This policy does not cover spelling or grammar checkers nor “reference managers that enable authors to collect, organize, annotate and use references to scholarly articles — such as Mendeley, EndNote, Zotero and others.” A third example is from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). This professional society publishes over 150 journals, transactions, and letters in various engineering disciplines. IEEE author guidelines state that AI-generated content (text, images, figures, code) should be disclosed in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript. 

Balance the Use of Generative AI Tools with Your Responsibility as an Author/Creator 

Most, if not all, publishers and professional societies do not outright prohibit the use of generative AI tools. Instead, the general guidance is to use generative AI tools for high-level “gists” or editorial tasks. “Gists” include generative texts to briefly introduce a topic, assist in brainstorming and ideation, help discover and understand existing literature in an area, and provide summary tables or outlines.  

Editorial tasks include finding synonyms or keywords, copyediting (e.g., spelling and grammar checks), and suggesting stylistic changes (e.g., “make this more formal”).  However, as a researcher, you have an ethical obligation to verify and check any tool's provenance, quality, and sources of output. 

You should verify facts and citations with reliable sources; ensure that proposed citations to the literature are accurate; maintain the privacy of high-risk, sensitive, and internal data as appropriate; and assess outputs for bias.  The latter is a complex point that may demand organizational resources to support individual researchers.  However, as the author or creator, you are ultimately responsible for your work. 

Disclose Your Use of Generative AI in Your Research Process 

Consistent with the general principles of honesty, traceability, and accountability, you should disclose your use of any generative AI tools in your research in your publications and works. Research journals and creative venues vary in their requirements, so the following is a broad list of what to disclose, which should be tailored to the applicable journal or venue: 

• Summary of why and how you used generative AI tools in your work; clearly explain what research tasks you performed with generative AI tools. 

• Provide complete citations (name, version) of the generative AI tools (for example, using MLA style). 

• Document the dates and timestamps of your usage of the generative AI tools. 

• The prompts that you gave to the generative AI tools. 

• Also, you must archive a copy of the unedited generative AI outputs for full traceability and provide the copy when requested.  

Protect Your Work Online 

As an author/creator, you may have concerns about your work being reused without your permission by generative AI technologies. You can take several actions to protect your work online, such as considering publishers that allow authors to opt out of data mining and avoiding websites and publishers whose terms of service enable data mining or are unclear on data privacy. 

Specific tactics include using a robot.txt file to prevent web crawlers from accessing your site and protecting text by substituting other symbols for English letters (for example, replace the English ‘a’ with a Cyrillic ‘a’; but note that this text now becomes inaccessible to screen readers); protecting images with products such as Glaze or Nightshade; and protecting audio files with products such as AntiFake.

When publishing your work, review the author’s contract carefully for any clauses that permit using your work for text mining and language model training. Remember that academic publishers are increasingly using AI-powered chatbots to help scholars find relevant articles, so opting out of text mining may affect the discoverability of your research and negatively affect your impact factor.  

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Supercharge Your Researching Ability With Otio — Try Otio for Free Today

Research papers are complex and time-consuming. Otio makes writing them simple. This AI tool helps you go from the reading list to the first draft faster. Use Otio to help you collect notes and organize research materials. Then, let the software generate a detailed outline and assist with writing the paper. Let Otio be your AI research and writing partner—try Otio for free today!