Information School News

Professor of Data Science Mike Thelwall recently gave his inaugural lecture at the University of Sheffield, entitled  How helpful are AI and bibliometrics for assessing the quality of academic research? The lecture, delivered in the University's Diamond building, was introduced by Head of the Information School Professor Briony Birdi. It covered Mike's research into whether Artificial Intelligence can inform - or replace - expert peer review in the journal article publication process and what this could look like, as well as to what extent bibliometrics and citation statistics can play a role in assessing the quality of a piece of research. Mike also discussed whether tools like ChatGPT can accurately detect research quality. The inaugural lecture was well attended by colleagues from around the University.

 Academic research normally goes through a peer review stage before it appears in a journal or book. This usually involves an editor selecting two or more scholars from the field that have relevant expertise and asking them to assess the submission. These reviewers then make comments about various aspects of the submission as well as giving an overall recommendation, such as: accept, ask for minor revisions and then accept, ask for major revisions and then reevaluate, or reject. The purposes of this exercise include filtering out flawed studies or papers with little value and helping the authors to improve their work by correcting errors or suggesting additional perspectives to consider. In an ideal world, every paper that passes peer review is error-free, clear and makes a valuable contribution to academic knowledge. In practice, however, there is no absolute truth and so reviewers must make judgements about the extent to which each work is high enough quality to be published. In ...