The Publisher of the Journal “Nature” Is Emailing Authors of Scientific Papers, Offering to Sell Them AI Summaries of Their Own Work
“I find it ridiculous. It’s jumping on the AI bandwagon, where we throw AI at about anything, useful or not.”
#Springer_Nature, the stalwart publisher of scientific journals including the prestigious Nature as well as the nearly 200-year-old magazine Scientific American, is approaching the authors of papers in its journals with AI-generated “Media Kits” to summarize and promote their research.
In an email to journal authors obtained by Futurism, Springer told the scientists that its AI tool will “maximize the impact” of their research, saying the $49 package will return “high-quality” outputs for marketing and communication purposes. The publisher’s sell for the package hinges on the argument that boiling down complex, jargon-laden research into digestible soundbites for press releases and social media copy can be difficult and time-consuming — making it, Springer asserts, a task worth automating.
“We know how important it is to communicate your research clearly and effectively to both your peers and the broader public, but it can be tedious and time-intensive to create concise and impactful texts for different audiences,” reads the email. “That’s why we’re excited to introduce our new Media Kit designed to help you expand the reach and impact of your work.”
Per the email, the package includes a roughly 250-word “plain language summary” designed to “simplify” research for the public; a roughly 300-word “research brief” that offers a “concise summary” for academic and scientific peers; a short, AI-spun audio summary; and social media copy characterized as “ready-to-use content” for promoting work “across platforms.”
The content, the publisher adds, will be generated using Springer’s own “secure, in-house” AI tool.
There’s a major catch, though: the tool’s “high-quality” outputs can’t always be trusted. On an accompanying webpage linked in the email, Springer warns that “even the best AI tools make mistakes” and urges authors to painstakingly review the AI’s outputs and issue corrections as needed for accuracy and clarity.
“Before further use,” reads the webpage, “review the content carefully and edit it as you see fit, so the final output captures the nuances of your research you want to highlight.”
Simon Hammann, a food chemist at the University of Hohenheim, Germany and a Springer-published author who received the emailed offer, characterized the AI media bundle as a cash grab.
“I find it ridiculous,” he told Futurism. “It’s jumping on the AI bandwagon, where we throw AI at about anything, useful or not. I am even more annoyed by the price tag.”
“I didn’t think there was anything left for publishers to monetize (after having authors acquire the funding, do the research, write the paper, do the peer review, and correct the page proofs for free while they take in all the profits), but here I stand corrected,” he continued, adding that the “research brief” promised in the package “is essentially the abstract that you’re writing anyway usually.”
Hammann added that researchers might be “left to wonder” what they’re “actually paying for, if the publisher doesn’t even see promotion of their outputs as their job, but hands that over to researchers as well.”
To that end — with the exception of the audio summary, at least — it’s unclear what Springer’s $49 package is offering authors that much cheaper or free generative AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini models can’t.
“At Springer Nature, we understand how vital it is for researchers to be able to communicate their research to different audiences — from colleagues and funders to policymakers and the public. This multi-media content bundle offering high-quality, AI-generated summaries and posts has been developed to help them do just that,” the company said in response to questions about this story. "The content is generated using the support of a secure AI-tool.
“No memory of the paper is retained or stored or used for training,” it continued. “The content bundle is only created when requested by the original author of the publication and can be reviewed and edited by the original author, ensuring that a human is always in the loop.”
Springer has made numerous forays into AI. The publisher announced last year that it would embrace AI as a tool to drive its business — and science, purportedly — forward, declaring on its website that “Springer Nature is committed to unlock the potential of AI and other emerging technologies to advance scientific discovery and innovation.”
That apparent commitment appears to be taking shape right now. Earlier this week, for instance, the massive publishing body announced in a press release that it would be deploying a “new AI-driven tool” crafted to automate “editorial quality checks” and notify editors to "potentially unsuitable manuscripts. The announcement adds that manuscripts may be held back from peer review if the AI tool deems them editorially unfit.
At the same time, amid a broader field of scientific publishers grappling with a pipe-clogging onslaught of fake, AI-generated studies being submitted for peer review, Springer has been attempting to keep garbage-quality AI entries at bay via two “bespoke AI tools” designed to detect suspicious language and imagery. (Though Springer claimed in a press release last year that both tools proved effective in pilot testing, AI detection tools are notoriously unreliable.)
In other words, Springer’s embrace of AI has been a juggling act. On the one hand, it’s charging researchers for automated social copy and trying to use AI to expedite the review process. On the other, it’s deploying AI systems to detect the unauthorized use of AI by authors.
Hammann, meanwhile, noted that the publisher’s $49 AI upsell is just one of the ways that Springer promises to help scientists promote their work — for a little extra dough, that is.
“Funnily, Springer Nature emailed me with the opportunity to get a 82 x 52 cm poster for my publication,” Hammann recalled. “Only $89.”
▻https://futurism.com/springer-nature-ai-media-kit
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