Authorship responsibilities of scientists who use AI research agents

Counts differ because each database indexes a different set of publications. We treat OpenAlex as the canonical count; Google Scholar is not shown (no API, and crawling it violates its ToS).

The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) tools capable of performing research independently, which we call AI research agents (AIRAs) is likely to significantly impact how science is planned, performed, reviewed, evaluated, and communicated. However, the expected gains in efficiency and productivity from the deployment of AIRAs should not undermine science’s epistemic and ethical values, such as accountability, transparency, reproducibility, and rigor. In this paper, we revisit the AI authorship debate in light of the reported capabilities of AIRAs and argue that these tools do not qualify for authorship because they cannot be held morally responsible for their contributions. We also reject the use of the term “scientist” to refer to these tools and argue that human scientists who use AIRAs have three key authorship responsibilities: (1) to carefully oversee and manage AIRAs; (2) to accurately and appropriately disclose AIRAs’ contribution to research; and (3) to be accountable for research involving AIRAs by addressing questions and concerns raised by the scientific community and the public. Finally, we consider some related researcher responsibilities that are topics for future research, including the obligation to monitor, audit, and evaluate the performance of AIRAs and the obligation to address the social, economic, legal, and environmental implications of using AIRAs.