Generative Artificial Intelligence and Responsible Authorship: Scientific, Ethical, and Legal Considerations

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is a paradigm shift that redefines knowledge retrieval, development, communication, and verification. However, GenAI’s capabilities for mimicking the work of human scholars have advanced, generating content indistinguishable from that of human authors, making pre-publication editing and peer review challenging. Through an extensive bibliographic exploration of the Scopus and HeinOnline databases, we investigated academic, ethical, and legal attitudes toward GenAI and scientific authorship. A backward reference search was conducted, beginning with bibliographic evidence published from 2022 to 2025, to identify earlier contributions that demonstrate stakeholders' positions. Index keyword co-occurrence analysis was performed to identify trends and attitudes among the scientific and legal professional communities. It is well recognized that GenAI impacts the traditional ideas and practices of authorship, creativity, ownership, and copyright, but accountability and responsibility remain with the authors. Although the need for reforming guidelines and laws related to these subjects is unanimously recognized, academic scholars tend to debate theoretical and doctrinal subjects, while legal professionals focus on the deliberate misuse of GenAI, legal schemes, ethical compliance, verification of the origin of content, and unauthorized use of resources protected by proprietary rights. The ongoing technological developments in GenAI powerfully shape opinions and drive new ideas for the scientific and legal community.