Journal Publishing Guide

With the proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) tools including generative AI and large language models (LLM), editors of scholarly journals are thinking critically about the role these tools could or should play within the publishing process. Editorial teams have taken a variety of approaches, with some journals requiring disclosure for some allowable uses and others requiring authors and peer reviewers to attest that they will not use AI tools for specific tasks. 

Policies related to AI should guide authors and peer reviewers and consider ethical, legal, and privacy concerns at all stages of the publishing process, including:

• the fact that, as non-legal entities, AI tools cannot be listed as authors;
• if and when contributors/authors can use AI tools for idea generation, the collection and analysis of data, the writing of a manuscript, and any other steps related to preparing a submission; 
• if and when peer reviewers can use AI tools to assist with assessing a submission; 
• how and when the use of allowable AI tools should be disclosed.

Example AI Policies for Authors/Submissions:

• JMLA
• Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication
• EBLIP
• Spectrum

Example AI Policies for Peer Reviewers:

• SAGE Journals
• Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication
• Nature

• Artificial intelligence (AI) in decision making (discussion document)  
• Authorship and AI Tools 
• Handing an article produced by AI (advice from COPE Council)
• Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers 
• Peer review manipulation suspected during the peer review process (flowchart)