REIDICS Policy on the Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

In recent years, we have witnessed a strong proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, which have moved from having anecdotal use in highly specialized areas to being applied broadly across many domains of our societies. This phenomenon presents new and interesting opportunities for science, but also significant challenges.

For example, since the emergence of chatbots, it has become possible to produce texts that, while linguistically accurate, fluent, or convincing, may be compromised in various ways. Multiple sources warn us that these tools run the risk of including biases, distortions, irrelevancies, misrepresentations, and plagiarism, many of which are caused by the algorithms that govern their generation and which depend heavily on the content of the materials used in their training.

Thus, there is sufficient evidence to state that AI presents significant risks both in the creation and dissemination of knowledge due to its potential to amplify misinformation and disinformation, which in turn raise new legal issues related to intellectual property.

Therefore, it is necessary to introduce mechanisms that ensure the reasonable use of artificial intelligence in science, regardless of the technology used or the purpose for which it is applied.

For all these reasons, the journal is committed to ensuring academic integrity and transparency in research within its scope and requires that authorship comply with the following guidelines on the use of artificial intelligence in the preparation of articles.

Unacceptable Uses

  1. Authorship of the article.
    AI may not be listed as the author or co-author of any article. Although the legal status of an author differs from one country to another, in Spain and in most jurisdictions, authorship always rests with a natural person.

  2. Autonomous generation of scientific content.
    AI must not be used to generate hypotheses, interpret data, or formulate conclusions without the supervision and validation of the authors.

  3. Omission of disclosure.
    Failure to disclose the use of AI in an article is considered a breach of academic ethics and may result in the rejection of the submission or the retraction of an article that has already been published.

Acceptable Uses

  1. Assistance in writing and editing.
    AI may be used to improve language clarity, grammatical correctness, and textual fluency; however, the authors are responsible for the final content and must verify its accuracy.

  2. Literature review.
    Authors may use AI as support in the process of reviewing the literature and preparing article summaries, always ensuring that the information generated is accurate and supported by verifiable sources.

  3. Data analysis and modeling.
    The integration of AI for data analysis and modeling is permitted, provided that it is described in detail in the methodology and that the reliability of the resulting data is guaranteed.

  4. Plagiarism and reference checking.
    Authors may use AI tools to verify the originality of their work and to improve the accuracy of citations and references.

Disclosure of AI Use

Any use of AI must be explicitly disclosed in the article by indicating the tool used, its purpose, and the prompts employed (or the actions taken to reproduce the result) in a statement of AI use published at the end of the article. This statement must include the following information:

  • Name and version of the AI tools used.

  • Brief description of how AI was used (e.g., assistance with literature review, editing and revision of the draft, data analysis, etc.).

  • Actions taken to obtain the results for each task (e.g., prompts, programming, etc.) and to ensure reproducibility.

In addition, the author must report the use of AI during the manuscript submission process by checking the specific field in the submission checklist.

Editorial Process

Editors and reviewers must specify any use of AI tools in the evaluation of the manuscript and in the generation of reviews and correspondence. This information must be communicated to the authors and to anyone involved in the editorial process.

To ensure the privacy of research data and reviews, all parties must be aware that most AI tools retain the instructions and data submitted to them, including manuscript content, and that, for example, providing an author’s article to a chatbot violates confidentiality.

License

This policy is based on the document prepared by the UAB Publications Service and distributed under a CC-BY license.
URL: https://publicacions.uab.cat/es/revistas/politica-ia