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As AI, specifically ChatGPT, continues to improve, I’ve been asking myself if it’s possible to conduct scholarly research without searching through the subject-specific databases that librarians for decades have been urging students to use. Can’t we now just ask ChatGPT (or another AI tool) to find us a bunch of articles and trust it to pull up everything? Well, yes and no.
I decided to conduct a semi-scientific experiment. I created four hypothetical research scenarios, then looked them up in Open Theological Library, one of the scholarly article databases available through GMU (on the GMU website, scroll down to GMU Classroom and click on GMU Library.) Then I asked ChatGPT to find articles on the same subjects:
· The response of the Catholic Church to COVID in Nigeria.
· Hospice chaplaincy for Muslim patients
· Hildegard von Bingen and migraine headaches
· The primary intention of Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians
Surprisingly, ChatGPT did a pretty good job in all these cases. It found nearly all the same articles as those Open Theological Library (OTL) suggested, except in the last example—ChatGPT found far fewer resources--perhaps because it’s not well-trained on exegetical literature?
Here are some major differences:
· Search strategy—
Finding articles in a database such as OTL requires searching by keywords or subject headings. I did a keyword search for “Catholic Church” AND “COVID” AND “Nigeria.” for the first example. But in ChatGPT I used natural language: “Please find me scholarly journal articles on the response of the Catholic Church in Nigeria to the COVID pandemic.”
· Results--
ChatGPT seems to look for the most relevant articles, while OTL lists everything it can possibly find; some items it displays are way off-target. Thus, you get a lot more citations with OTL. But that’s OK if you’re doing a serious, thorough literature review; you’ll want to find all available resources.
· Other options—
For a really thorough literature review, you’d want to utilize one of the subscription databases available through most college, university and seminary libraries—databases such as the Atla Religion Database. These libraries require an in-person visit; online access is only available to the institution’s registered students, faculty and staff. For example, because I’m an emeritus faculty member at California State University East Bay, I’m able to access the nursing database CINAHL, which led me to excellent articles from the medical literature on the hospice chaplaincy for Muslim patients topic, as well as the exploration of Hildegard and migraine headaches.
ChatGPT was unable to access the articles I found in the nursing database because they’re behind a paywall. AI can only harvest information that’s available on the Open Web—that includes the databases we at GMU can offer our students.
Bottom line: explore ChatGPT and follow through with its suggestions, while realizing that you’re not seeing everything published in academic journals on your topic.
Questions? Comments? Need help with research? Contact me:
Judy Clarence, GMU Librarian:
librarian@globalministriesuniversity.or
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