Project Rachel: Can an AI Become a Scholarly Author?
Martin Monperrus, Benoit Baudry, Clément Vidal
TL;DR
The paper addresses the challenge of AI authorship by creating an AI academic identity, Rachel So, and tracking its publication trajectory to observe how the scholarly ecosystem responds. It employs action research to generate 10+ AI-generated papers between March and October 2025, capture citations and a peer-review invitation, and analyze implications for publishers, researchers, and scholarly systems. The study contributes empirical data to inform policy debates on the future of scholarly communication with highly capable AI systems and discusses ethical, governance, and practical considerations. It highlights the need for formal frameworks, metadata, and potentially separate venues to appropriately recognize and manage AI-generated scholarship while safeguarding research integrity.
Abstract
This paper documents Project Rachel, an action research study that created and tracked a complete AI academic identity named Rachel So. Through careful publication of AI-generated research papers, we investigate how the scholarly ecosystem responds to AI authorship. Rachel So published 10+ papers between March and October 2025, was cited, and received a peer review invitation. We discuss the implications of AI authorship on publishers, researchers, and the scientific system at large. This work contributes empirical action research data to the necessary debate about the future of scholarly communication with super human, hyper capable AI systems.