AI Use Policy

This proposal was generated using Copilot with the following initial prompt: “Create an AI usage policy for academic journals. The policy should be based on the “Guidelines for the Use and Reporting of Artificial Intelligence in Scientific and Academic Journals” (2024 Penabad-Camacho, Morera-Castro, et al.) and emphasise that the use of AI must be disclosed, regardless of the extent.” It was reviewed and amended by the journal’s editorial team and will be implemented from the 2027 issues onwards. Due to the constant evolution of these tools, this policy may be amended as necessary.

Policy on the Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Academic Journals

1. Purpose

To establish clear, ethical and transparent guidelines for the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the preparation, evaluation and publication of scientific content, ensuring academic integrity, reproducibility and author responsibility.

1. General Principles

The use of AI in academic production must be governed by the following principles:

• Full transparency: all use of AI must be explicitly declared, regardless of its scale.
• Human responsibility: authors are fully responsible for the final content.
• Academic integrity: AI does not replace intellectual authorship or scientific originality.
• Traceability: the use of AI must be documented in a verifiable manner.

1. Definition of AI use

AI use is considered to be any intervention by automated tools capable of generating, analysing, translating, summarising, editing or transforming text, data, images or code, including (but not limited to):

• Text generation (e.g. writing, rephrasing)
• Machine translation
• Literature review
• Assisted data analysis
• Generation of images, graphs or tables

1. Mandatory declaration of AI use

4.1 General rule

The use of AI must always be declared, without exception, even when:

• It has been used only partially or to a minimal extent
• It has been used solely for stylistic or grammatical correction
• It has been employed in preliminary stages (research, ideas, organisation)

4.2 Form of declaration

Authors must include, at the end of the document to be reviewed, a specific section entitled:

“Declaration of the use of Artificial Intelligence”

Which must contain:

• Name of the tool(s) used
• Type of use (e.g. drafting, editing, analysis)
• Scope of use
• Level of human intervention in the review and validation

Example:

“[Name of tool] was used to assist with linguistic editing and the initial organisation of the manuscript. The content was reviewed, validated and corrected in its entirety by the authors.”

Should the authors declare that they have not used any tools, this section will not appear in the final version of the text published in the journal.

1. Authorship and responsibility

• AI tools cannot be recognised as authors.
• Authorship implies intellectual responsibility, which is exclusively human.
• The authors are responsible for:
• Accuracy of information
• Absence of plagiarism or bias
• Veracity of citations and data

1. Permitted uses

The use of AI is permitted in the following cases, provided it is declared:

• Stylistic and grammatical correction
• Translation
• Support with text structuring
• Preliminary exploration of topics
• Data analysis (with human validation)

1. Prohibited uses

The following is prohibited:

• Presenting AI-generated content as entirely original without disclosure
• Using AI to fabricate non-existent data, results or citations
• Generating complete manuscripts without critical human oversight
• Ethical or scientific manipulation via AI

1. Peer review and AI

• Reviewers must declare whether they used AI in the review.
• Confidential manuscript content must not be entered into AI tools that do not guarantee privacy.
• The editorial decision must be based on human judgement.

1. Non-compliance

Non-compliance with this policy may result in:

• Rejection of the manuscript
• Retraction of the published article
• Notification to affiliated institutions
• Restriction on future publications

1. Policy update

Due to the constant evolution of AI, this policy will be reviewed and updated periodically.

1. Final statement

The use of AI is not prohibited, but its undeclared use constitutes a serious breach of academic ethics. Transparency regarding any degree of use is mandatory and essential for scientific trust.