Unintended consequences of open datasets: is agent-driven secondary analysis publishable?

Wednesday, 1 July 2026, 11am to 12pm

We all intuitively understand that if someone copy-pastes 30 minutes of Googling on a topic into a template, that is not a publishable result. But secondary analysis can now be done in 30 minutes by AI Agents. Should editors and peer reviewers treat the difference between "fast-churn" versus "meaningful" secondary analysis like art, where they couldn't define it, but know it when they see it? And how will the value of primary data acquisition work change over time, as AI Agents become more capable?

Matt Spick is a metascientist at the University of Surrey; his research focuses on how we can maintain integrity and defend the principles of Open Science in the Agentic AI era.

Speaker(s): Matt Spick (University of Surrey)

Series: Bodleian Open Scholarship Event (BOSE)

Department: Bodleian Libraries (Department)

Organiser: Bodleian Libraries Office for Open Research

Host: Bodleian Libraries Office for Open Research

Register here: https://go.glam.ox.ac.uk/BOSE26_OpenDatasets