Scientific production in the era of Large Language Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Kusumegi, Keigo, Yang, Xinyu, Ginsparg, Paul, de Vaan, Mathijs, Stuart, Toby, Yin, Yian
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Kusumegi, Keigo
Yang, Xinyu
Ginsparg, Paul
de Vaan, Mathijs
Stuart, Toby
Yin, Yian
author_facet Kusumegi, Keigo
Yang, Xinyu
Ginsparg, Paul
de Vaan, Mathijs
Stuart, Toby
Yin, Yian
contents Large Language Models (LLMs) are rapidly reshaping scientific research. We analyze these changes in multiple, large-scale datasets with 2.1M preprints, 28K peer review reports, and 246M online accesses to scientific documents. We find: 1) scientists adopting LLMs to draft manuscripts demonstrate a large increase in paper production, ranging from 23.7-89.3% depending on scientific field and author background, 2) LLM use has reversed the relationship between writing complexity and paper quality, leading to an influx of manuscripts that are linguistically complex but substantively underwhelming, and 3) LLM adopters access and cite more diverse prior work, including books and younger, less-cited documents. These findings highlight a stunning shift in scientific production that will likely require a change in how journals, funding agencies, and tenure committees evaluate scientific works.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_13187
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Scientific production in the era of Large Language Models
Kusumegi, Keigo
Yang, Xinyu
Ginsparg, Paul
de Vaan, Mathijs
Stuart, Toby
Yin, Yian
Digital Libraries
Artificial Intelligence
Computers and Society
Physics and Society
Large Language Models (LLMs) are rapidly reshaping scientific research. We analyze these changes in multiple, large-scale datasets with 2.1M preprints, 28K peer review reports, and 246M online accesses to scientific documents. We find: 1) scientists adopting LLMs to draft manuscripts demonstrate a large increase in paper production, ranging from 23.7-89.3% depending on scientific field and author background, 2) LLM use has reversed the relationship between writing complexity and paper quality, leading to an influx of manuscripts that are linguistically complex but substantively underwhelming, and 3) LLM adopters access and cite more diverse prior work, including books and younger, less-cited documents. These findings highlight a stunning shift in scientific production that will likely require a change in how journals, funding agencies, and tenure committees evaluate scientific works.
title Scientific production in the era of Large Language Models
topic Digital Libraries
Artificial Intelligence
Computers and Society
Physics and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.13187