Generative AI Policy

Research Integrity and Editorial Governance

Generative Artificial Intelligence Policy

Multidisciplinary Journals (MJ)  |  e-ISSN 3047-8499

Multidisciplinary Journals (MJ) recognizes that artificial intelligence (AI), including large language models, chatbots, image generators, coding assistants, and other generative AI (GenAI) systems, may support scholarly work. Their use must not compromise originality, accuracy, confidentiality, copyright, research ethics, or human accountability. This policy applies to authors, reviewers, editors, editorial staff, and production personnel throughout submission, peer review, production, and post-publication handling.

This policy is informed by the COPE position on authorship and AI tools, the STM guidance on generative AI in scholarly communication, and the ICMJE recommendations on AI in publishing. These frameworks guide this policy but do not replace applicable law, institutional ethics requirements, or the journal's other published policies.

Human accountabilityHuman authors remain responsible for every claim, citation, dataset, image, analysis, and conclusion.
TransparencyMaterial AI use must be described clearly, accurately, and at the time of submission.
ConfidentialityUnpublished manuscripts and personal or sensitive data must not be uploaded to unapproved AI systems.

1. Scope and Definitions

AI-assisted technology refers to software that supports tasks such as spelling, grammar, translation, coding, classification, analysis, visualization, or formatting. Generative AI refers to systems that create or substantially transform text, code, images, audio, video, data, or other content in response to prompts or inputs.

This policy addresses the responsible use of such tools in scholarly communication. It does not determine authorship eligibility, peer-review procedure, plagiarism sanctions, data-access conditions, or post-publication remedies in full; those matters remain governed by MJ's corresponding policies.

2. Authorship and Human Responsibility

  • AI tools must not be listed as authors, co-authors, or contributors because they cannot approve the final work, declare competing interests, transfer or license rights, or accept responsibility for the integrity of the publication.
  • Every listed author remains fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, legality, ethical compliance, and proper attribution of AI-assisted material.
  • Authors must review, verify, and edit all AI output. AI output must not be treated as an authoritative source merely because it appears plausible or fluent.
  • Authors must verify every citation, quotation, factual statement, numerical value, code segment, image, and analytical result. Fabricated, unverifiable, or irrelevant references must be removed.

3. Permitted Uses by Authors

Use Status Conditions
Spelling, grammar, and readability Generally permitted Only when the tool does not introduce new scholarly content or alter meaning. Routine spelling and grammar checking does not normally require disclosure; when in doubt, disclose.
Translation or substantial language rewriting Permitted with disclosure Authors must verify meaning, terminology, quotations, and discipline-specific accuracy.
Drafting, summarizing, or restructuring text Permitted only with disclosure and human control Authors must independently assess originality, logic, evidence, bias, and attribution. AI-generated text must not substitute for the authors' scholarly reasoning.
Coding, statistical analysis, classification, or visualization Permitted when methodologically justified and disclosed Methods, software/model details, validation, human oversight, and reproducibility information must be reported sufficiently.
Research in which AI is the object or instrument of study Permitted with full methodological reporting Report the tool/model, provider, version or access date, prompts or workflow where relevant, parameters, validation, limitations, ethics, and data governance.

4. Prohibited and Unacceptable Uses

Authors must not use AI to:

  • fabricate, falsify, manipulate, or conceal data, evidence, citations, participants, methods, results, images, or research records;
  • generate references or quotations that have not been checked against the original source;
  • create deceptive images, figures, audio, or video, or make undisclosed content-altering edits to research images;
  • paraphrase copied material to conceal plagiarism, duplicate publication, or unattributed reuse;
  • replace human ethical judgment, informed consent, expert interpretation, or responsibility for research decisions;
  • upload confidential, personal, proprietary, copyrighted, restricted, or identifiable research data to a system without an appropriate legal basis, authorization, and security safeguard; or
  • misrepresent AI-generated or AI-transformed material as independently produced human scholarship.
Images and audiovisual material MJ does not accept AI-generated or materially AI-altered images as genuine observational or documentary evidence. Such material may be considered only when AI generation or transformation is itself part of the research method, is scientifically justified, is clearly labeled, complies with ethics and copyright requirements, and is fully described in the Methods section and figure caption.

5. Required Disclosure by Authors

Material use of AI must be declared during OJS submission and in the manuscript. Writing or translation assistance should normally be disclosed in the Acknowledgments or a dedicated Generative AI Disclosure section. Use for data collection, analysis, code, simulation, image creation, or figure generation must also be described in the Methods section.

The disclosure should identify:
  • the tool, model, provider, and version or date accessed;
  • the purpose and manuscript sections or research tasks affected;
  • the nature of the input and output, including prompt or workflow information when relevant to reproducibility;
  • the human verification, editing, validation, and oversight performed; and
  • any relevant data-protection, ethical, copyright, or competing-interest consideration.
Suggested disclosure statement
“During the preparation of this manuscript, the authors used [tool/model, provider, version or access date] for [specific purpose]. The authors reviewed, verified, and edited all outputs and accept full responsibility for the accuracy, originality, integrity, and final content of the manuscript.”

If no material AI use occurred, authors may state: “The authors did not use generative AI technologies to generate scholarly content, analyze data, or create images for this manuscript.”

6. Reviewers

  • Submitted manuscripts, supplementary files, reviewer invitations, and review correspondence are confidential records.
  • Reviewers must not upload all or part of an unpublished manuscript to public or third-party AI services where confidentiality, data retention, training use, intellectual property, and access controls are not contractually assured.
  • Reviewers must not delegate critical evaluation or the writing of the review report to AI. The recommendation and supporting reasoning must reflect the reviewer's own expert judgment.
  • Any journal-authorized AI assistance must be disclosed to the handling editor, used only within the approved secure environment, and independently checked by the reviewer.
  • Suspected inappropriate or undisclosed AI use must be reported confidentially to the editor; reviewers should not accuse authors directly or rely solely on an AI-detection score.

7. Editors and Editorial Staff

  • Editors and staff must protect manuscript confidentiality and must not upload unpublished content to unapproved AI systems.
  • AI may not make, determine, or replace editorial decisions. Desk rejection, reviewer selection, revision requests, acceptance, rejection, and post-publication actions require accountable human judgment.
  • Any publisher-approved AI service used for screening, copyediting, production, or administrative support must have appropriate privacy, security, confidentiality, and intellectual-property safeguards.
  • Automated indicators, including AI-content detection or similarity scores, are screening signals only. They must not serve as the sole evidence for a misconduct finding or editorial sanction.
  • Where AI materially affects copyediting, translation, visual or ancillary content produced by the journal, the journal will provide appropriate disclosure and human verification.

8. Investigation and Corrective Action

When possible undisclosed, deceptive, unsafe, or otherwise inappropriate AI use is identified, MJ will assess the evidence fairly and confidentially. Authors will normally be asked for an explanation and may be required to provide prompts, outputs, data, code, source files, original images, or other records necessary to clarify the work.

Depending on the evidence, seriousness, intent, and effect on the reliability of the work, the journal may request clarification or revision, reject the manuscript, suspend evaluation, notify relevant institutions where appropriate, or apply a correction, expression of concern, retraction, or other action under its Publication Ethics and Post-Publication policies. No finding will be based solely on an automated AI-detection result.

9. Related MJ Policies

This policy should be read together with the following pages:

10. Policy Review

Because AI technologies and scholarly standards continue to develop, the Editorial Board will review this policy at least annually or earlier when material regulatory, technological, ethical, or publishing developments occur. The version date below identifies the policy currently in force.

Reference frameworks: COPE; STM Association; ICMJE. Policy version: August 2026.