LLMs as Research Tools: A Large Scale Survey of Researchers' Usage and Perceptions

Zhehui Liao·Maria Antoniak·Inyoung Cheong...Joseph Chee Chang...
COLM·2025·45 citations

TLDRThe first large-scale survey of 816 verified research article authors is presented, finding that traditionally disadvantaged groups in academia (non-White, junior, and non-native English speaking researchers) report higher LLM usage and perceived benefits, suggesting potential for improved research equity.

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(generated 20 days ago)

This survey's finding that 81% of researchers use LLMs in their workflows has become a widely referenced empirical benchmark for establishing the prevalence of LLM adoption in academia — cited to motivate studies on AI in qualitative research, contextualize disciplinary differences in AI adoption, and justify the urgency of examining AI's role in scholarly writing — while its demographic findings on equity implications (e.g., greater benefits for non-native English speakers and junior researchers) have informed work on LLMs as artificial collaborators for underrepresented groups and structural barriers in academia, its characterization of task-specific usage patterns (information seeking, editing, literature review) has shaped the design of new research tools and studies of researcher workflows, and its survey methodology and qualitative analysis approach have been directly adopted by subsequent survey studies on AI perceptions and thematic analyses of open-ended responses.

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LLMs as Research Tools: A Large Scale Survey of Researchers' Usage and Perceptions

Zhehui Liao·Maria Antoniak·Inyoung Cheong...Joseph Chee Chang...
COLM·2025·45 citations

TLDRThe first large-scale survey of 816 verified research article authors is presented, finding that traditionally disadvantaged groups in academia (non-White, junior, and non-native English speaking researchers) report higher LLM usage and perceived benefits, suggesting potential for improved research equity.

How do people cite this paper?

(generated 20 days ago)

This survey's finding that 81% of researchers use LLMs in their workflows has become a widely referenced empirical benchmark for establishing the prevalence of LLM adoption in academia — cited to motivate studies on AI in qualitative research, contextualize disciplinary differences in AI adoption, and justify the urgency of examining AI's role in scholarly writing — while its demographic findings on equity implications (e.g., greater benefits for non-native English speakers and junior researchers) have informed work on LLMs as artificial collaborators for underrepresented groups and structural barriers in academia, its characterization of task-specific usage patterns (information seeking, editing, literature review) has shaped the design of new research tools and studies of researcher workflows, and its survey methodology and qualitative analysis approach have been directly adopted by subsequent survey studies on AI perceptions and thematic analyses of open-ended responses.

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