# Project Rachel: Can an AI Become a Scholarly Author?

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.14819 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.14819/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 8 of its 39 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Nov 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [The AI Scientist: Towards Fully Automated Open-Ended Scientific Discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.06292/) (2024)
- [A Comprehensive Survey of AI-Generated Content (AIGC): A History of Generative AI from GAN to ChatGPT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04226/) (2023)
- [Deep Research Agents: A Systematic Examination And Roadmap](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.18096/) (2025)
- [OpenScholar: Synthesizing Scientific Literature with Retrieval-augmented LMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.14199/) (2024)
- [AgentRxiv: Towards Collaborative Autonomous Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.18102/) (2025)
- [Risks of AI Scientists: Prioritizing Safeguarding Over Autonomy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.04247/) (2024)
- [Towards Scientific Discovery with Generative AI: Progress, Opportunities, and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.11427/) (2024)
- [aiXiv: A Next-Generation Open Access Ecosystem for Scientific Discovery Generated by AI Scientists](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.15126/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper documents Project Rachel, an action research study that created and tracked a complete AI academic identity named Rachel So. Through careful publication of AI-generated research papers, we investigate how the scholarly ecosystem responds to AI authorship. Rachel So published 10+ papers between March and October 2025, was cited, and received a peer review invitation. We discuss the implications of AI authorship on publishers, researchers, and the scientific system at large. This work contributes empirical action research data to the necessary debate about the future of scholarly communication with super human, hyper capable AI systems.