Ombudsperson for Academic Ethics and Procedures of the Republic of Lithuania
Curriculum Vitae Ombudsperson agendaRecently, an increasing number of academic articles have been retracted due to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in scholarly publishing. One prominent example is the Neurosurgical Review journal, published by Springer Nature, which has already retracted 129 articles this year. Most retractions were due to the use of large language models (LLMs) without proper disclosure by the authors.
A significant number of the retracted papers were authored by researchers from Saveetha University (India). Some of these retractions were related to excessive self-citation and unclear text.
According to the publishers, the use of AI tools without proper disclosure violates the journal’s editorial policy. Neurosurgical Review emphasizes that any use of LLMs must be explicitly stated in the methods section, and the final version must be approved by a human author.
Experts are debating how to differentiate acceptable AI usage from misconduct. This situation prompts broader discussions on transparency and accountability in academic publishing.
More information about these retractions can be found on the Retraction Watch website: Retraction Watch
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Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
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