scientific publishing platforms

Abstract: The rapid expansion and specialization of scientific literature make it increasingly difficult to identify not only what is known, but where new and still supportable knowledge may emerge. We introduce Knowledge Manifold Optimization (KMO), a discovery-oriented extension of the Knowledge Manifold framework that treats scientific discovery as a multiobjective search over a continuous, literature-derived knowledge space. Candidate locations are evaluated using four complementary objectives: persistent knowledge-regime boundary strength, band-pass white-space novelty, semanticgradient magnitude, and evidential support. Rather than collapsing these criteria into a single weighted score, KMO identifies Pareto-optimal Supported Knowledge Gaps, defined as corpus-relative unoccupied regions that remain sufficiently supported by surrounding literature. The method is demonstrated on a 99-paper corpus in aerodynamics and aerodynamic design. On a 21 x 21 grid, exact Pareto analysis produced 19 non-dominated points, of which 16 formed the practical front after excluding points with zero white-space score. These solutions exhibited distinct discovery modes, including methodology bridges, aero-structural topology/FSI integration, functional aerodynamic-device integration, and rear-wake/vehicle flow-control integration. A distance-maximization baseline preferentially selected extrapolative regions with substantially lower support and reliability, demonstrating why emptiness alone is insufficient. Representative Pareto locations were converted into auditable evidence packages and then verbalized by a constrained large language model into candidate research hypotheses. The results show that scientific discovery can be formulated as structured multi-objective search in an explicit knowledge space, while keeping novelty corpus-relative and separating numerical discovery from downstream language generation.

Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used for literature search and synthesis. However, it is unclear whether they retrieve accurate bibliographic information in environmental science. Therefore, we quantitatively compared the errors of widely used LLM platforms in retrieving references related to original articles from five leading environmental science journals (Energy and Environmental Science, Nature Sustainability, Nature Climate Change, Lancet Planetary Health, and Environmental Science and Technology) published in 2024 to 2025. Claude, ChatGPT, Grok, DeepSeek, Perplexity, and Gemini were used as the LLM platforms. LLMs retrieved 10 references for each of the 50 randomly selected original article using either the article's abstract or its full-text as prompt. The retrieved references were subject to a multimetric score ratio combining validity of bibliographic data, Google Scholar link, digital object identifier, Scopus Electronic Identifier and relevance score (cited by or being the index paper), and the proportion of complete fabrication that failed all metrics. Abstract-only prompt yielded significantly higher accuracy than full-text one. This advantage was confirmed in multilevel mixed-effect multivariable regression after adjusting for journal, platform, and output order. Source journal and the position of a reference within the output list were also independently associated with retrieval accuracy, with lower-listed references associated with lower accuracy. These findings suggest that LLM assisted literature retrieval in environmental science remains moderately accurate and overall inconsistent, varying significantly by platform, journal, prompt type, and output position. Abstract-based prompting, as task-aligned information compression, may outperform full-text one in literature retrieval. Caution should be used when generalizing our findings.