ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2026
Academic journals' AI policies fail to curb the surge in AI-assisted academic writing.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- AI and authorship: Norms and uses to preserve human-led science.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Provenance, Not Prohibition: A Framework for AI in Scholarly Publishing.Laryngoscope investigative otolaryngology · 2026Article
- Letter to the Editor: Disclosure of Generative AI Usage in Biomedical Academic Writings Should Be Mandatory and Comprehensive.Journal of Korean medical science · 2026Article
- Reply to Wang: Policy failure can be assessed from observed outcomes.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Policy snapshots cannot establish journal AI-policy failure.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Article
- Six misconceptions about large language models: A minimal model and diagnostic taxonomy.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Un-AI-ing: Compliance, Evasion, and the Distortion of Research Writing in the Age of AI Detection.Annals of biomedical engineering · 2026Article
- The crisis of manufactured scholarship: confronting AI-driven "letter-bombing" and profile inflation in medical journals.World journal of surgical oncology · 2026Review
- Academic journals' AI policies fail to curb the surge in AI-assisted academic writing.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The rapid integration of generative AI into academic writing has prompted widespread policy responses from journals and publishers. However, the effectiveness of these policies remains unclear. Here, we analyze 5,114 journals and over 5.2 million papers to evaluate the real-world impact of AI usage guidelines. We show that despite 70% of journals adopting AI policies (primarily requiring disclosure), researchers' use of AI writing tools has increased dramatically across disciplines, with no significant difference between journals with or without policies. Non-English-speaking countries, physical sciences, and high-OA journals exhibit the highest growth rates. Crucially, full-text analysis on 164 k scientific publications reveals a striking transparency gap: Of the 75 k papers published since 2023, only 76 (~0.1%) explicitly disclosed AI use. Our findings suggest that current policies have largely failed to promote transparency or restrain AI adoption. We urge a reevaluation of ethical frameworks to foster responsible AI integration in science.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.