Most publications show very low AI usage scores, with higher mean AI usage in PLoS than Nature¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associational r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2026 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? The distribution of AI usage scores is concentrated near zero, and the mean score is higher in PLoS than in Nature. → Haoyang Wang 2026

Evidence¶

Haoyang Wang 2026¶

Haoyang Wang, Mingze Zhang, Yi Bu, Star Xing Zhao, Meijun Liu. (2026). Smaller, Younger, and More Impactful: How AI-Assisted Writing Transforms Research Teams. https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.27404 doi:10.48550/arxiv.2605.27404

q2 · i? · associational · r2

Distributional analysis of AI usage scores in the PLoS and Nature corpora, plotted in Fig. 1. The article reports that "most publications demonstrate very low AI usage scores" and that the mean score is higher in PLoS than Nature, with thresholds of 0.092 (PLoS) and 0.026 (Nature) at the 95th percentile.

"It shows that most publications demonstrate very low AI usage scores and only a small portion exabits high AI usage scores. In addition, a higher mean AI usage score is founded in PLoS than Nature, suggesting that publications published in top -tier journals are more reluctant in applying AI-assisted writing."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• AI-assisted teams have a higher probability of producing top-5%-FWCI publications than human-written teams — related
• Teams using AI-assisted writing are smaller-sized, with the association stronger for Nature publications — related
• Research teams using AI-assisted writing have a lower average career age than human-written teams — related
• The negative association between AI-assisted writing and team age is strongest among the youngest teams — related