jobs.ac.uk - Great jobs for bright people
  • Find a Job
  • Find PhDs
  • Career Advice
  • Jobs by Email
  • Advertise a Job
  • Recruiters
  • Your Account

  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to secondary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

career-advice.jobs.ac.uk

Secondary Sidebar

jobs.ac.uk Career Advice

  • CV and Cover Letter Advice
    • CV Tips
    • Free CV Templates
    • Cover Letters with Examples
    • Personal Profiles
    • CV Resources
  • Jobseeking and Interview Tips
    • Jobseeking Tips
    • Academic Interviews
    • Professional Interviews
    • Jobseeking and Interview Resources
  • Career Development
    • Academic Careers
    • Research Careers
    • Career Progression Stories
    • Professional Careers
    • Working in Industry
    • Career Development Resources
    • Global Careers
    • Working From Home
  • Women in Higher Education
  • FE Career Advice
    • FE CV & Interview Tips
    • Working in FE
    • Managing your Career in FE
    • FE Jobs Profiles
  • Resources
    • Academic Case Studies
    • Professional Case Studies
    • Job Profiles
      • Biological Science Jobs
      • Health and Medical Jobs
      • Engineering and Technology Jobs
      • Computer Science Jobs
      • Physical and Environmental Science Jobs
      • Professional Service Jobs
        • Business Development Manager Jobs Profile
        • Chef Jobs Profile
        • Civil Service Jobs Profile
        • Email Marketing Jobs Profile
        • SEO Jobs Profile
        • Office Admin Jobs
    • Vlogs
  • Webinars
  • Country Profiles
    • Africa
      • Egypt
      • Ghana
      • Kenya
      • Nigeria
      • South Africa
    • Americas
      • Canada
      • United States of America
    • Asia
      • Bahrain
      • Brunei
      • China
      • Hong Kong
      • India
      • Japan
      • Kazakhstan
      • Malaysia
      • Qatar
      • Saudi Arabia
      • Dubai
      • Singapore
      • South Korea
      • Turkey
      • United Arab Emirates
      • Work in Vietnam – Country Profile
      • Work in Uzbekistan – Country Profile
    • Europe
      • Belgium
      • Denmark
      • Finland
      • France
      • Germany
      • Ireland
      • Italy
      • Netherlands
      • Norway
      • Russia
      • Spain
      • Sweden
      • Switzerland
      • United Kingdom
    • Oceania
      • Australia
      • New Zealand
  • PhD and Studentship Advice
    • PhD
    • Studentship Resources
    • Vlogs
  • Need help advertising a job?
  • About jobs.ac.uk
  • Ask A Professional
  • Academic Spotlight Interviews
  • Menu
    • CV and Cover Letter Advice
      • CV Tips
      • Free CV Templates
      • Cover Letters with Examples
      • Personal Profiles
      • CV Resources
    • Jobseeking and Interview Tips
      • Jobseeking Tips
      • Academic Interviews
      • Professional Interviews
      • Jobseeking and Interview Resources
    • Career Development
      • Academic Careers
      • Career Progression Stories
      • Research Careers
      • Professional Careers
      • Working in Industry
      • Career Development Resources
      • Global Careers
      • Working From Home
    • Women in Higher Education
    • FE Career Advice
      • FE CV & Interview Tips
      • Working in FE
      • Managing your Career in FE
      • FE Jobs Profiles
    • Resources
      • Academic Case Studies
      • Professional Case Studies
      • Interview questions tool
      • Vlogs
      • Job Profiles
        • Biological Science Jobs
        • Health and Medical Jobs
        • Engineering and Technology Jobs
        • Computer Science Jobs
        • Physical and Environmental Science Jobs
        • Professional Service Jobs
        • Civil Service jobs
    • Webinars
    • Country Profiles
      • Africa
        • Work in Egypt – Country Profile
        • Work in Ghana – Country Profile
        • Work in Kenya – Country Profile
        • Work in Nigeria – Country Profile
        • Work in South Africa – Country Profile
      • Americas
        • Work in Canada – Country Profile
        • Work in the United States of America – Country Profile
      • Asia
        • Work in Bahrain – Country Profile
        • Work in Brunei – Country Profile
        • Work in China – Country Profile
        • Work in Hong Kong – Country Profile
        • Work in India – Country Profile
        • Work in Japan – Country Profile
        • Work in Kazakhstan – Country Profile
        • Work in Malaysia – Country Profile
        • Work in Qatar – Country Profile
        • Work in Saudi Arabia – Country Profile
        • Work in Singapore – Country Profile
        • Work in South Korea – Country Profile
        • Work in Turkey – Country Profile
        • Work in United Arab Emirates – Country Profile
      • Dubai
      • Europe
        • Belgium Country Profile
        • Work in Denmark – Country Profile
        • Work in Finland – Country Profile
        • France Country Profile
        • Work in Germany – Country Profile
        • Work in Ireland – Country Profile
        • Work in Italy – Country Profile
        • Work in the Netherlands – Country Profile
        • Work in Norway – Country Profile
        • Work in Russia – Country Profile
        • Work in Spain – Country Profile
        • Work in Sweden – Country Profile
        • Work in Switzerland – Country Profile
        • Work in the United Kingdom – Country Profile
      • Oceania
        • Work in Australia – Country profile
        • Work in New Zealand – Country Profile
    • Studentship Advice
      • PhD
      • Studentship Resources
      • Vlogs
    • Need help advertising a job?
    • About jobs.ac.uk

Using ChatGPT effectively and ethically in academic writing

AI chatbot Artificial Intelligence digital concept

It’s been hard to avoid ChatGPT lately (and more broadly, the class of “artificial intelligence” tools to which it belongs). There’s breathless coverage everywhere, and it seems to be split almost evenly between rapturous claims about AI’s promise and warnings about the apocalypse its use will bring. The reality, of course, is somewhere in between. It’s possible to use ChatGPT as a tool to write more efficiently and effectively, and it’s possible to do so ethically – but doing so takes some careful thought.

That careful thought has to start with understanding how ChatGPT works, and thus what it can do (and what it can’t). ChatGPT is a “large language model”: a statistical model that (to oversimplify a little) is very good at producing English text that sounds like a human wrote it. It does this (again oversimplifying) by taking a “prompt” and knowing what words, in the huge corpus of online writing it has previously digested, usually follow that prompt. Initially, ChatGPT’s prompt is what you ask it; then as it produces text, the prompt for each new word or phrase is the passage that precedes it. If this sounds rather like the “predictive text” feature on your cell phone, that’s because it is: just much, much more powerful.

Knowing how ChatGPT works matters because it leads to the first of two absolutely crucial insights you must come to, before you can use it as an effective and ethical writing tool. That insight: ChatGPT does not know anything. ChatGPT produces plausibly phrased and styled text, but it doesn’t know or care whether that text is true. User after user has been shocked to find that, as a result, ChatGPT “hallucinates” (or invents) supposedly factual statements that aren’t true. In academic writing, that includes misstatements of all kinds, as well as citations for statements true and false that sound plausible but don’t actually exist.

Here’s the other absolutely critical insight about ChatGPT: you are responsible for any mistakes it makes. Just as the woodworker, not her chisel, is responsible when a cabinet door won’t close, you are responsible for whatever bears your byline – no matter what tools you used to write it. If your paper includes an imaginary citation, the fact that it came from ChatGPT doesn’t excuse your including it. What comes out of ChatGPT – or any writing tool, for that matter – is only a suggestion, something you can consider using in your manuscript; but you (and your coauthors) must make the decision to use it and then stand behind that decision.

With these two insights behind us, we can put ChatGPT to work. Consider first how to use it effectively. ChatGPT can’t be trusted to generate content, so don’t ask it for a literature review or to critically evaluate an idea. Instead, think of it as an idea generator and as a style assistant. Here are some writing tasks that take advantage of what ChatGPT is designed to do:

  • Ask ChatGPT for a list of hypotheses one could test with a set of available data.
  • Ask ChatGPT to suggest three alternative “pitches” for the importance argument in a grant proposal.
  • Give ChatGPT rough notes and ask it to provide a full-text draft.
  • Give ChatGPT a rough draft and ask it to polish the grammar and syntax, revise the structure to improve logical flow, or make it more concise.
  • Give ChatGPT an informally written draft, and ask it to rewrite more formally, specifying that the result should be in the style of papers in your field. (Be careful, though: ChatGPT is very good at reproducing the writing patterns of past literature, and many of those patterns are bad.)
  • Give ChatGPT a formally written draft, and ask it for a more engaging, less formal version. Much of our literature could use this treatment!
  • If you’re using methods you’ve written about before, give ChatGPT some of your old Methods text and ask it to paraphrase. Academic writers chafe at the need to avoid “self-plagiarism” in repeated descriptions of similar methods, but it’s always possible to rephrase.
  • Give ChatGPT a manuscript, or its Abstract, and ask it to generate a plain-language summary. You can even specify a target reading level.

All these (and more) are tasks that take advantage of ChatGPT’s strength: its ability to say things that sound like things people say. In every case, of course, you’ll see ChatGPT’s output as suggestions to consider, not as text to be absorbed uncritically into your work. Is ChatGPT’s version better than yours? Sometimes, it will be, and that’s great. Is it worse? Often it will be, and you’ll discard it. Or does it suggest an alternative you hadn’t thought of before?

I hope you’ll agree with me that we should use our tools not just effectively, but also ethically. That includes ChatGPT. Because AI writing tools are new, there’s some confusion about what is and isn’t fair game in their use. I think that can be resolved by applying the same ethical standards you’d consider for any other writing tool. First, take responsibility. Check ChatGPT suggestions carefully: it isn’t your coauthor’s, or a peer reviewer’s, responsibility to find and fix the nonsense it may generate.  If something unfortunate makes it through, accept the consequences with grace – including prompt retraction of a paper, with apologies, if it should ever come to that. (Fortunately, if you’ve followed the advice above, it won’t come to that.) Next, don’t misrepresent your work. Some journals require disclosure if a manuscript was written with AI assistance; if they do, disclose it. Yes, it’s a little strange, as the same journals don’t care that you used Word’s spellcheck tool or had grammar advice from your brilliant housemate Aditi; but if they ask, disclose. If you have coauthors or supervisors, it’s probably best to explain your ChatGPT use to them too. Finally, as for any tool, consider the environmental and social costs. For ChatGPT those include the carbon footprint of the considerable computational power you’re harnessing, the fact that the software was trained on a corpus of human-produced work whose authors aren’t acknowledged or compensated, and the psychological toll on human workers who have been tasked with finding and labelling hate speech, violent threats, and more in that corpus. To be clear, all tools have costs like these; an ethical tool user understands and weighs them.

Does this all sound like ChatGPT might be a difficult tool to master? Perhaps it is; but so is an atomic force microscope, or a bandsaw, or an oboe. With some thought and some practice, you can have ChatGPT expand your writing skills without leading you astray.

Related article:

Teaching effectively and ethically in a ChatGPT world

What did you think of our article? - please rate

4.3 / 5. 6


Share this article

Dr. Stephen Heard

Dr. Stephen Heard is an evolutionary ecologist and Professor of Biology at the University of New Brunswick in Canada. He is the author of The Scientist’s Guide to Writing and of Charles Darwin’s Barnacle and David Bowie’s Spider. He blogs about academia, science and many other things at Scientist Sees Squirrel, or you can find him on Twitter as @StephenBHeard.

Reader Interactions

You may also like:

  • Audience at the conference hall.

    Writing Abstracts for Conferences

  • Supporting Individual Researchers in a Publish-or-Perish Culture

    Supporting Individual Researchers in a Publish-or-Perish Culture

  • Quiet Mornings with a Tea

    How to stay calm for your PhD defence

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

eight − seven =

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Follow us

Searching for a job in the United Kingdom

Latest Jobs

  • Faculty Position in AI/ML for Biosciences

    Department of Biosciences and Bioinformatics, Xi'an Jiaotong - Liverpool University

    Location: Suzhou

    Salary: Competitive salary in the market


  • Apprentice - Chemical & Environmental Engineering

    Engineering, University of Nottingham

    Location: Nottingham

    Salary: £23,563 - £23,946 per annum, depending on skills and experience.


  • Research Assistant / Research Associate (Fixed Term)

    Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge

    Location: Cambridge

    Salary: £32,546 - £45,413 per annum


  • Senior Scientific Associate, Pre-clinical Genome Editing Facility (12 months Fixed Term)

    Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, University of Cambridge

    Location: Cambridge

    Salary: £35,116 - £45,413 per annum


  • Senior Research Fellow

    College of Social Sciences - School of Social Policy and Society, University of Birmingham

    Location: Birmingham

    Salary: £57,422 - £66,537 Grade: 9


  • Housekeeping Assistant

    Trinity Hall , University of Cambridge

    Location: Cambridge

    Salary: £12.77 per hour, plus pension and benefits


Footer

jobs.ac.uk - Great jobs for bright people
  • Find a Job
  • Find PhDs
  • Career Advice
  • Jobs by Email
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Terms of use
  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookie Policy
  • Accessibility Statement

Copyright © jobs.ac.uk 1998 - 2025

  • Find a Job
  • Find PhDs
  • Careers Advice
  • Jobs by Email
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Terms of use
  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookie Policy
  • Accessibility
jobs.ac.uk - Great jobs for bright people

Copyright © jobs.ac.uk 1998 - 2025