- 17 Dec, 2025 *
I work in academic research support services in the United States. The Confederation of Open Access Repositories, an international organization supporting the principles of open access, just released a report. It’s essentially a "state of the academic research environment" report for 2025, with trends that will continue to impact research in 2026.
As a reminder, the academic research ecosystem is hugely beneficial to the general public. It’s where new medicines and techniques are developed, reviewed, criticized, replicated, and approved by a community of peer experts. It’s where new solutions to the climate c…
- 17 Dec, 2025 *
I work in academic research support services in the United States. The Confederation of Open Access Repositories, an international organization supporting the principles of open access, just released a report. It’s essentially a "state of the academic research environment" report for 2025, with trends that will continue to impact research in 2026.
As a reminder, the academic research ecosystem is hugely beneficial to the general public. It’s where new medicines and techniques are developed, reviewed, criticized, replicated, and approved by a community of peer experts. It’s where new solutions to the climate crisis emerge, where outdated theories and practices in psychology and mental healthcare are replaced, and where new insights are discovered about our past (through archaeology, anthropology, and historical research) and our place in the universe (through astronomy, physics, and planetary science). Academia can be a wonderful knowledge production site.
(Embracing the "yes, and" from improv) And, academia is highly flawed and rooted in colonialism and systemic oppression, and now financial oppression with outrageous tuition rates.
And of course trying to get politicians or corporate America to use any of the cutting-edge research that comes out of academic institutions is a whole other story.
But still, the research produced by these institutions worldwide is important and affects us all. And as public taxpayers in the US, we should understand what’s happening to the public research infrastructure.
Here are the key takeaways from the COAR report:
- researchers are increasingly incorporating AI and machine learning tools into their research
- in the research publishing world, AI has been integrated into publishing activities like copyediting, plagiarism detection, summarizing, translating, and even peer review
- generative AI tools like ChatGPT are also shaping how people find and use published research. Historically, people used keyword-based searches to find content. Now, more and more people are using genAI that promises to deliver personalized results, often summarizing them in plain language rather than academic jargon. This has raised concerns around accuracy, bias, and misinformation, which non-experts may not be able to pick up on. And because AI learns on previous information, the misinformation feedback loop can grow unrestricted: AI provides misinformation to journalist, journalist publishes that information to a general audience, people repost and retweet, and AI scrapes all of that misinformation on its next training cycle.
- AI making its way into the research ecosystem is coinciding with a growing skepticism and declining trust in science, institutions, and research itself. Along with a growing industry running paper mills and producing fake papers, which undermines the credibility of real research, the state of research right now is unstable.
Remember when I said that academic research is important and affects us all? That’s true, but it can effect us in positive or negative ways. High-quality research that’s conducted using methodologically sound approaches, has been tested and reproduced and debated, and is largely accepted by peer experts can have a profoundly positive impact on humanity. But low-quality research that’s conducted or written by ChatGPT, peer reviewed by an Elsevier (academic publisher) AI model, and incorrectly summarized by ChatGPT can have a profoundly negative impact on humanity.
I know many folks on Bear Blog dislike AI in personal and professional spaces, as do I. It’s important that everyone knows how AI is playing a role in our collective research space, too.
What can you do?
If you’re a Bear Blogger, you’re probably already doing what you can to resist AI. My only other suggestion as someone who works in this field is to utilize your public and academic libraries more instead of using genAI platforms. Please don’t upload your medical records to ChatGPT to get a "personalized diagnosis," for so many reasons.
I believe we as a species can find our way out of the AI mess we’ve created. Some days my belief is stronger than others, but without hope, what do we have?