\n<\/p>\n
One journal editor who has served in that position for a year says she’s seeing more AI-generated fake citations in submissions than when she started.<\/p>\n
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison\/Inside Higher Ed | zbruch\/iStock\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
A few weeks ago, an adjunct education professor reached out to Charles Hodges and Stephanie Moore, two frequent research collaborators, asking for a copy of their 2023 paper titled \u201cInstructional presence and learner success in synchronous and asynchronous eLearning.\u201d The professor hoped to share it with students in his course on e-learning.<\/p>\n
Hodges and Moore were happy to share their work, but there was one problem: The paper doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe guy sent us the whole reference, and we were like, \u2018We never wrote that,\u2019\u201d said Moore, an organization, information and learning sciences professor at the University of New Mexico. \u201cIf you try and click on the [digital object identifier] link, it goes nowhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
The citation looks completely legitimate. It\u2019s formatted using APA style. It references the Online Learning Journal<\/em>\u2014a real journal in which Moore has published work\u2014as the paper\u2019s publisher. It even includes a fake DOI link, which leads to a \u201cDOI not found\u201d page. For anyone except the two misattributed authors, it would be nearly impossible to tell the paper is fake without further research. But the citation was hallucinated by artificial intelligence. <\/p>\n Hodges, C. B., & Moore, S. (2023).<\/strong> Instructional presence and learner success in synchronous and asynchronous eLearning. Online Learning Journal<\/em>, 27(2), 41\u201362. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.24059\/olj.v27i2.1234<\/p>\n Also within the last two months, Hodges, a professor of leadership, technology and human development at Georgia Southern University, was asked to review a book proposal on a topic adjacent to his work. <\/p>\n \u201cThe topic of this book wasn\u2019t exactly my area of expertise, but it wasn\u2019t totally outside it, either. The whole time I was thinking, \u2018I wonder why they asked me\u2019\u201d to review it, Hodges said. \u201cThen I get to the section where the prospective authors have listed competing or similar books, and they had a book listed that Stephanie and I had edited. It had a year, and it was listed with Springer, which is a major academic publisher. It even had a little summary of what the book was about.\u201d <\/p>\n But like the journal article, the book didn\u2019t exist. <\/p>\n As AI proliferates in academic life, professors are increasingly haunted by phantom citations. York St. John University geography professor Pauline Couper told Inside Higher Ed<\/em> on Bluesky that she reviewed a grant application that \u201ccited a nonexistent paper, apparently by me.\u201d Gale Sinatra, an education and psychology professor at the University of Southern California, recently asked an AI chatbot for a list of her publications, and it included some real papers and some made-up ones. The fake papers were so convincing she double-checked her own curriculum vitae.<\/p>\n \u201cI seriously had to check,\u201d she said. \u201cSo, anyone else would just assume they were accurate.\u201d<\/p>\n The fake citations are becoming a particular problem for academic journals, which have typically checked reference lists during the second or third round of the review process, said Andrea Harkins-Brown, editor in chief of the Journal of Technology and Teacher Education<\/em>. <\/p>\n \u201cThey look very plausible, because that is what large language models are designed to do,\u201d Harkins-Brown said. \u201cSometimes they\u2019re listing authors that typically publish on that topic. They look like venues where you would expect to see the work, but there\u2019s a mismatch. So it might be the right author, but not the right year.\u201d <\/p>\n It\u2019s a relatively new issue. Hodges, who was the editor of TechTrends<\/em> from 2014 to 2024, said he didn\u2019t have issues with fake citations, even at the end of his tenure. Harkins-Brown has been editor for about a year, and she already sees more AI-generated citations in submissions than she did when she started. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve had papers that have been through several rounds of review\u2014I\u2019ve looked at them as the editor and several rounds of reviewers have looked at them. And these phantom references are really hard to spot\u2014we didn\u2019t catch them until we were in the copyediting phase,\u201d Harkins-Brown said. <\/p>\n Moore at UNM is also the editor in chief of the Journal of Computing in Higher Education<\/em>, published by Springer. Springer screens submissions for integrity, and sometimes submissions will be pulled from the pile before they even reach Moore\u2019s desk. Harkins-Brown\u2019s journal is considering a software that would do something similar. <\/p>\n \u201cEvery now and then, we\u2019ll get something where an author is flagged with an integrity issue, and that means that person is engaging in clear, documentable patterns of citing work that doesn\u2019t exist or other ethical issues,\u201d Moore said. \u201cWe\u2019ve definitely been seeing an increase in that kind of activity, and Springer implemented [the screening] because of these issues with either AI-generated articles or fake citations and things like that.\u201d<\/p>\n When the editors find a fake citation, Harkins-Brown asks the author to send a copy of the cited paper. <\/p>\n \u201cI always want to assume that maybe they made a mistake, maybe it\u2019s just the wrong year or maybe there\u2019s some plausible reason why I can\u2019t find it,\u201d she said. But most of the time, the authors simply tell her they can\u2019t. \u201cThere\u2019s not a lot of back-and-forth conversation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n This unfortunately leads to good work being ultimately rejected, she said. <\/p>\n \u201cIn academia, folks are very focused on\u00a0\u2026 publish or perish,\u201d Harkins-Brown said. \u201cIt\u2019s just such a loss to use AI to try to save you a couple hours when it really could become the reason that you\u2019re sacrificing that work.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One journal editor who has served in that position for a year says she’s seeing more AI-generated fake citations in submissions than when she started. Photo illustration by Justin Morrison\/Inside Higher Ed | zbruch\/iStock\/Getty Images A few weeks ago, an adjunct education professor reached out to Charles Hodges and Stephanie Moore, two frequent research collaborators,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46100,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[9294,23617,2357,4319,21146,10693],"class_list":{"0":"post-46099","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-aicreated","9":"tag-citations","10":"tag-fake","11":"tag-journal","12":"tag-riddled","13":"tag-submissions"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/46100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}