Blog 7: The benefit of traceability in the age of AI

The benefit of traceability: encouraging students to follow good practice in source use in the current stage of AI

As a researcher of academic integrity and student practices with source use (Davis, 2013), I have taken a specific interest in how ChatGPT generates citation and reference lists. So far in 2023 while educators have observed that Chat-GPT3 is highly capable of producing a plausible, grammatically correct text, its use of sources, citation generation and references are recognized weaknesses (Compton, 2023). Although it might be improving in terms of making claims using sources less general, the accuracy of citations and reference lists remains suspect. In my tests on ChatGPT3 over several months, a few well-known sources were accurately cited, but the majority were falsified, using a real author and real journal, but fabricated year, article title, page numbers and DOI. This is a significant concern, because it means vast numbers of texts are currently being produced with falsified, predicted attribution, and these are being actively used since the citations, like the text, appear plausible.

As academic integrity lead at my institution, I have been monitoring the student declarations we require for transparent use of AI tools. While many of them declare use of AI tools to assist with learning and for textual improvements such as fixing grammar, structure, paraphrasing and reducing word count, several state that they are using ChatGPT to conduct research, find sources and create or correct reference lists. Given the inaccuracies explained above, use of ChatGPT for this purpose is leading students to very poor practice of falsification, and obviously means they are not accessing sources themselves. While we debate whether our assignment briefs are fit for purpose, one quick win to avert this kind of falsification could be to require students to provide direct working links to the sources they have used in the production of their assignment. Specifically, I believe we need to encourage students to use our institutional resources and to include in their reference lists the links to library databases and book classifications to make every source traceable. This approach increases the value of the research and writing process, and makes it visible to both reader and writer. It also means that students are making use of internal resources that should surely be a benefit of belonging to that institution.

Compton, M. (2023) AI text generators (not chatGPT) on essays, citation and plagiarism. Blog post. Available at https://reflect.ucl.ac.uk/mcarena/2023/03/10/aiessay/

Davis, M. (2013). The development of source use in international postgraduate writing. Journal of English for Academic Purposes: Special Issue on Source Use in L2 Academic Writing, 12(2) 125-135. Available at http://authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S1475158512000823