Productive (and responsible) use of GenAI in research writing

In this blog post, we will be talking about responsible use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) to assist with editing text and producing content for research. This post was a collaborative effort by colleagues in Chancellery (Research and Enterprise).

Since GenAI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and CoPilot became increasingly commonplace, many researchers have been quick to adopt these tools to assist in research writing. In response to a prompt, the tools can revise text, produce summaries or reviews, and provide tailored responses to questions.

However, there are several risks associated with using GenAI to edit or produce content. Risks and concerns associated with GenAI in research and teaching are widespread, indicated by the Parliamentary inquiry into the use of generative artificial intelligence in the Australian education system. Below, we discuss how GenAI can be used to support common research tasks, and the University advice you should be aware of to conduct the task responsibly.

1. Writing a literature review

Writing a literature review can be an intellectually demanding task. However, whether you are writing a review from scratch, or building on a review section from a previous work, crafting a succinct, informative and convincing literature review is an essential aspect of research.

GenAI tools can support the process when used responsibly. For example, GenAI can be prompted to initially explore an area, brainstorm ideas, or map related concepts. However, the University advises against using the direct output of GenAI in any literature reviews for several reasons:

• The generated citations and references can be limited, out of date, irrelevant, or entirely fabricated (or ‘hallucinated’)
• The generated review may seem accurate and convincing, but often contains errors
• While such reviews can be good summaries, they do not offer insight into the quality or reliability of the cited work, or into its limitations
• The generated text may be copied verbatim from other published work without citation, and hence use of the text would be considered plagiarism
• GenAI cannot be listed as an author, so using GenAI output, even if the text is entirely original (i.e., not plagiarised), would require direct quotation and reference to the GenAI (more on this below).

Generating other text for publication

Having reviewed the literature and analysed your data, you might seek assistance in coming up with the words to discuss your findings or argument in your work. You can use GenAI to generate suggestions, but you must evaluate any suggestions before using them. If you include the text (either the original verbatim text generated by the tool, or modified text that was based on text from a tool) the University advises that you adhere to the following guidelines:

• Authors undertake the necessary due diligence to establish the veracity of the generated material, where appropriate;
• The material be subject to a plagiarism check, as generative AI output can be a close paraphrase of another source;
• The material be subject to a copyright infringement check, as generative AI may produce outputs protected by copyright law;
• A footnote be used instead of an in-text citation, stating the tool used, the version (if available), the date on which it was used, and the exact text of the prompt;
• Authors are explicit as to which material, such as specific passages of text or images, were created or modified by AI tools.

3. Editing text to improve grammar and spelling

Many of us might go through a ‘brain dump’ stage of the writing process, where we might write a whole bunch of text to try and convey our ideas, but the text might be incoherent, grammatically incorrect or non-academic in style. GenAI tools can be a great tool to workshop different ways of expressing the same idea, or improving the language or expression of text. While it may be useful to use these tools on one or two sentences at a time, it is never advisable to input substantial sections of your text. Try inputting something like Provide feedback regarding grammar, clarity and academic tone for: “linguist people always say that peoples orient to interactions in there each day lives”. When inputted to MS Copilot, on 26 July 2024, I received the following output:

Here’s some feedback on your sentence:

Grammar and Clarity:

“Linguist people”: This phrase is awkward. It would be clearer to say “Linguists”.

“Peoples”: The correct term here is “people”.

“There”: This should be “their”.

“Each day lives”: This should be “everyday lives”.

Academic Tone:

“Always say”: This phrase can be more formally expressed as “often assert” or “frequently state”.

“Orient to interactions”: This can be more precisely stated as “orient themselves towards interactions”.

Revised Sentence:

“Linguists often assert that people orient themselves towards interactions in their everyday lives.”

Although the tool does not explain why some words or phrases should be used instead of others (e.g., why, in this sentence, we should use ‘their’ instead of ‘there’), further prompting can provide detailed grammatical and stylistic explanations. Different tools may also provide varying degrees of detail in their explanations.

Rather than have these tools ‘fix’ grammar, try getting them to make suggestions and explain why something is more correct, clear or academic than the original. With some practice developing your prompt engineering skills, you can harness the power of GenAI tools to interactively exchange ideas with you on how to improve your writing skills rather than attempting to outsource your writing to GenAI.

When seeking editing assistance, researchers, including Graduate Researchers preparing a thesis, should be aware of the requirements in the Graduate Research Training Policy and the Authorship Policy. There are clear delineations between changing language and expression (similar to Microsoft Word spell-check) and more significant changes (e.g., restructuring an entire paper). Depending on the output (e.g., graduate research thesis, journal article, or other output) different policies and requirements apply.

When inputting your own text into a publicly available GenAI tool, you should be aware that the text is provided without privacy or other protections. Hence, if you input text that is copyrighted, confidential or contains an innovative idea, you may lose the right to any protections the text has, or that you planned to secure (e.g., Intellectual Property protection).

Other resources

There are many more uses of GenAI in research writing, and researchers should be aware of the key University guidelines which provide guidance on how to use GenAI in research responsibly:

• Statement on responsible use of digital assistance tools in research
• Graduate researchers and digital assistance tools

Given the ever-changing landscape of GenAI, the University regularly revises current guidance and releases additional guidance. We have a Generative AI Taskforce (GAIT) which oversees the University’s response to the risks and opportunities associated with generative artificial intelligence tools and systems. We suggest referring to their resources page for an up-to-date list of the variety of guidance available for GenAI and research and teaching. Readers are also encouraged to contact us (via hayden.blain@unimelb.edu.au) if you have ideas for further guidance that would support your responsible use of GenAI in research writing.

If you would like to speak to someone about how to responsibly use GenAI in research writing, we encourage you to contact your Faculty’s Research Integrity Advisor who can help direct you to relevant resources.

In sum, the University of Melbourne encourages the responsible use of GenAI in research writing – taking full advantage of this new technology to streamline and support the research pipeline. When considering using GenAI for your research, we encourage you to consult the guidance listed in this post to help facilitate the productive and responsible use of GenAI.

Featured image credit: An Artificial Intelligence Illustration on the Wall by Tara Winstead on Pexels.