New Challenges in Scientific Publications: Referencing, Artificial Intelligence and ChatGPT

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a surge in scientific publications, some of which have bypassed the usual peer-review processes, leading to an increase in unsupported claims being referenced. Therefore, the need for references in scientific articles is increasingly being questioned. The practice of relying solely on quantitative measures, such as impact factor, is also considered inadequate by many experts. This can lead to researchers choosing research ideas that are likely to generate favourable metrics instead of interesting and important topics. Evaluating the quality and scientific value of articles requires a rethinking of current approaches, with a move away from purely quantitative methods. Artificial intelligence (AI)-based tools are making scientific writing easier and less time-consuming, which is likely to further increase the number of scientific publications, potentially leading to higher quality articles. AI tools for searching, analysing, synthesizing, evaluating and writing scientific literature are increasingly being developed. These tools deeply analyse the content of articles, consider their scientific impact, and prioritize the retrieved literature based on this information, presenting it in simple visual graphs. They also help authors to quickly and easily analyse and synthesize knowledge from the literature, prepare summaries of key information, aid in organizing references, and improve manuscript language. The language model ChatGPT has already greatly changed the way people communicate with computers, bringing it closer to human communication. However, while AI tools are helpful, they must be used carefully and ethically. In summary, AI has already changed the way we write articles, and its use in scientific publishing will continue to enhance and streamline the process.