By Ann Philpott
Twenty-two people attended the Special Interest Group on Academic Editing (SIGAE) meeting on Wednesday 16 October 2024 with the icebreaker topic of “artificial intelligence and academic editing”.
We began with the hot topic of ChatGPT. One attendee recalled their experiment in generating an article on a specific topic through ChatGPT’s free software. In a couple of seconds, an article of 1,000 words appeared. It asked the attendee, “Do you like it?”
“No,” replied the attendee.
In another couple of seconds, it generated another completely different 1,000 word article. When the third attempt produced another different article, the attendee decided to use it, but changed about 50% of it.
This attendee said ChatGPT would be a useful tool for creating templates or for copywriting. Other editors have used it to find sources.
With the free AI software, it is unclear who owns the copyright of an AI-generated work. This is because it is unclear who the creator is/was. This might or might not be true for AI-generated words that you have changed somewhat and AI-generated images that you have changed. The uncertainty of copyright ownership of AI-generated material that has been substantially changed by new human input is yet to be tested in the courts.
The meeting’s icebreaker was Taylor and Francis’s AI policy on its website, which attendees were encouraged to read before the meeting. Possibly, the most important paragraph in the policy was the following:
Authors must clearly acknowledge within the article or book any use of Generative AI tools through a statement which includes: the full name of the tool used (with version number), how it was used, and the reason for use. For article submissions, this statement must be included in the Methods or Acknowledgements section. Book authors must disclose their intent to employ Generative AI tools at the earliest possible stage to their editorial contacts for approval … If approved, the book author must then include the statement in the preface or introduction of the book. This level of transparency ensures that editors can assess whether Generative AI tools have been used and whether they have been used responsibly.
The meeting also discussed an excellent article on AI that was recently published in the August Gatherings: “Ethics and the use of Generative AI in professional editing” by Renée Otmar, Rose Michael, Sharon Mullins and Katherine Day. It can be accessed on the Springer Nature Link website.
Some pertinent observations in the article’ conclusion were:
- ChatGPT could play a useful role in supporting the work of human creators – writers and editors – by taking on the “grunt work”, such as correcting spelling, recommending punctuation, ensuring consistency in tense, and other copyediting tasks, so long as the parameters were clearly and narrowly defined.
- [The authors] recognise the rich collaborative potential for writers and editors in the early brainstorming stages of developing story ideas, when generative AI can provide suggestions to help clarify their thinking on rough drafts prior to in-depth work with a professional editor.
- Sometimes the best input from an editor is simply to say, “Look, here something is not – not yet – quite right.”
The discussion opened up into the various forms of AI, some of which are “more acceptable” to use than others. Attendees had the most reservations about generative AI software because of the plagiarism, copyright considerations and the loss of control of your work. However, other AI-driven tools such as Draftsmith and Grammerly were used by some (Draftsmith) or many (Grammerly – particularly the “correct only” mode) and do not put your thesis, article, document or manuscript into an LLM (large language model) pool, where you can lose copyright and control. Further, there are tools that editors use that have no AI in them at all, such as PerfectIt, a professional proofreading software program, which corrects style inconsistencies and copyediting and spelling errors. IPEd has reviews of Draftsmith (7 February 2024) and PerfectIt (no date) on its website.
Questions were asked about paragraph style in PerfectIt and how to change the built-in citation style of Chicago to APA style. Apparently, there is a PerfectIt Facebook group that can answer these questions.
Another attendee showed us how generative AI can deliver meaningless citations with an example dropped into the Zoom chat.
A member from SCAE (IPEd’s Standing Committee on Academic Editing) reminded us about the Guidelines for editing research theses. This member advised us that there is no responsibility or requirement for editors to identify plagiarism of any kind in a thesis. An editor can draw a supervisor’s attention to any suspected issues, but it is the supervisor’s responsibility to check the content.
Another attendee said that authors are responsible for the content they provide to their editor. For an editor to start being a gatekeeper for an author’s content is “blurring the lines of editing. Besides, we don’t get paid enough for this type of deep-dive reviewing!”
The group ended with a brief discussion of how to go about generating ideas without using the internet or generative AI. Brainstorming with people in person, on Zoom or on other platforms is a very satisfying way of getting ideas to blossom and grow. You can ask your clients to talk to you about the things that are not quite clear to you (as thoughts can be expressed much quicker and can jumble about more in speech than in writing). Or you can get your students or clients to write their own thoughts down about a topic they wish to write about (perhaps in concept circles and then linking them or deleting some of them). Doing this before they go anywhere near the internet or generative AI software will end in a far more original topic that they are personally invested in than if they first jump on the computer. The computer can be used later to fill in gaps, evidence or examples once they have firmed up their ideas of what topic truly interests them.
At the end of the hour, the attendees melted into the night, hopefully (but I don’t know this for a fact) eager to attend the next SIGAE on 11 December.
Useful discussion groups for academic editors
Facebook Secret Editors Business
Facebook PerfectIt group
Upcoming SIGAE meetings open to all members of IPEd for the rest of the year and 2025
- Wednesday 11 December 2024, 6 pm (AEDT)
- Thursday 13 February 2025, 6 pm (AEDT)
- Wednesday 9 April 2025, 6 pm (AEST)
- Thursday 12 June 2025, 6 pm (AEST)
- Wednesday 13 August 2025, 6 pm (AEST)
- Thursday 9 October 2025, 6 pm (AEDT)
- Wednesday 10 December 2025, 6 pm (AEDT)
The meetings begin with an icebreaker topic and then move on to other discussions or questions that attendees have brought with them. The two-monthly meetings are free and open to all members of IPEd who have an interest in academic editing, whether that might be academic books, theses, journal articles, conference papers, research data or policy documents.
Meetings are for members only and you need to book to receive the link to that meeting.
Please submit ideas for icebreakers for future SIGAE meetings to ann.philpott@waterfront.net.au.
DISCLAIMER: While every effort has been made to portray the proceedings of the meeting fairly and accurately, the writer makes no assertion that the contents of this article are “accurate” in terms of claims made about AI software and what it can do, as well as about other matters raised at the meeting. It is a forum for open, informal discussion. The editor who uses AI needs to undertake their own due diligence.