The Presence and Nature of AI-Use Disclosure Statements in Medical Education Journals: A bibliometric study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background As AI-use becomes more common in research, disclosure policies have emerged to ensure transparency and appropriateness. However, database research in other fields suggests that disclosure may lag behind AI-use. Medical education journal editors report that submitted manuscripts rarely include AI-use disclosures, and they perceive a lack of clarity regarding when and how AI-use should be disclosed. However, we lack objective evidence regarding the incidence and nature of AI-use disclosure in medical education. Methods Using bibliometric methods, we searched a database of 24 leading medical education journals for articles published between January and July 2025 (n=2,762 articles). Screening with Covidence software excluded 716 non-empirical and/or non-English language articles. The remainder (n=2,046) were examined for the presence of AI-use disclosures, which were content-analyzed. Results 2.5% of empirical articles (n=51) had an AI disclosure statement. BMC Medical Education contained the most disclosures (24), followed by Medical Teacher (7) and Journal of Surgical Education (4). Forty-two articles were authored in non-native English-speaking countries, and 69.4% of all first authors had begun publishing in the past decade. Disclosures averaged 43 words and described use superficially: most commonly “editing” and “translation”. Of 18 named tools, ChatGPT was most common. Most disclosures explicitly attested to author responsibility for AI-produced material. Disclosures usually appeared in acknowledgements; those located in methods lacked responsibility attestation. Negative disclosures attesting that AI was not used were also present. Discussion AI-use disclosures in medical education journals are rare and appear mostly in work from non-native English-speaking regions of the world. A shared disclosure practice is evident: name the tool and affirm author responsibility, but describe use superficially. This suggests a practice of “safe” disclosure that may be more performative than informative, therefore failing to satisfy the goal of ensuring transparent and ethical AI use in research.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.039 | 0.265 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.156 | 0.204 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".