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Can we identify prominent scholars using ChatGPT?

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Abstract

It may be tempting to learn about scholars using ChatGPT. To validate ChatGPT for this task a small experiment was conducted based on the 50 most cited researchers at the author’s university. The results show that ChatGPT (GPT-3.5) only recognized an ad-hoc subset of the scholars with no obvious connection to the respective authors’ citation attributes or internet footprint. Moreover, details about the recognized scholars were often erroneous.

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Acknowledgements

ChatGPT was used for formatting some of the references into APA style using the prompt “Format the following reference into APA: ….”.

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Correspondence to Frode Eika Sandnes.

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Sandnes, F.E. Can we identify prominent scholars using ChatGPT?. Scientometrics 129, 713–718 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04882-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04882-4

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