If you're reading this, you probably already know that ChatGPT is a wildly popular chatbot introduced to the public by OpenAI in late 2022.
You may not be aware of a major emerging problem with using ChatGPT as a research assistant—its tendency to generate fake citations, also called "hallucitations." These citations seem complete and appear to be excellent scholarly articles that match your research topic. However, when you try to find the articles using Google Scholar or the library's resources, you won't find any matching results because the sources do not exist.
For more information about this issue, as well as ways that ChatGPT can be useful, read this excellent blog post from Duke University Libraries.
To find real sources for your research project, we recommend starting with the library's research guide for your subject. Try searching within the recommend databases on that guide, and contact the library if you need more help.
