GenAI-Assisted Writing and Academic Performance: Evidence from the Social and Behavioral Sciences

Abstract

This paper studies how Generative AI (GenAI)-assisted writing is associated with peer-reviewed publication output and journal placement in the social and behavioral sciences. We select lexical markers whose frequency rose sharply after ChatGPT's release in late 2022 and classify authors as GenAI-assisted writers when the share of these markers in their papers' titles and abstracts rises relative to their own pre-release baseline. Using matched author-level panel data and a difference-in-differences design, we estimate a 72% increase in publication output among GenAI-assisted writers relative to matched comparison authors in 2025. Across alternative specifications, the estimates range from roughly 52% to 88%. Mean journal placement based on the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) improves by roughly 1%, but this modest increase is less consistent across different specifications. Within authors' annual publication portfolios, the highest placement improves by 5%, whereas the lowest declines by 3%. However, only the improvement at the top persists once the annual number of publications is held constant. The increase in output is accompanied by an expansion of collaboration networks and a rise in single-authored publications. Productivity gains are largest among early-career researchers and authors from countries linguistically distant from English, groups likely to face greater writing-related barriers to publication. The results suggest that GenAI-assisted writing may lower these barriers and increase researchers' capacity to bring more projects to publication.