The Ethics of Prompting Large Language Models in Academic Publishing

Here, we build on a letter published in 2023 in this journal ( https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-023-03272-4 ) on prompt engineering for academic writing. Drawing on ethics literature, both new and old, we reflect on the prompting of large language models (LLMs) from three different moral perspectives: consequentialism (the ethics of outcomes), deontology (the ethics of duties), and virtue ethics (the ethics of character). While we recognize that human authors who prompt LLMs to derive text can simplify knowledge creation, the question becomes: are prompters equivalent to authors, and should they be rewarded as such? We push back against over-reliance on prompt engineering by arguing in favor of the craft of human draft as a task worth preserving in academia to encourage authors to retain control over published content that bears their name.