Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Policy
The Asian Journal of Information Science and Technology (AJIST) requires transparency, human accountability, confidentiality, and research integrity when generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) or AI-assisted tools are used. The policy applies to authors, reviewers, editors, and other individuals involved in manuscript preparation, peer review, editorial assessment, and publication.
1. AI Use by Authors
Authors may use GenAI or AI-assisted tools for limited assistive purposes such as language refinement, organisation of text, coding assistance, data-visualisation support, or other clearly disclosed research-support tasks. Such tools must not replace the authors’ scholarly judgement, verification, interpretation, or responsibility.
Authors remain fully responsible for accuracy, originality, references, permissions, analysis, interpretation, conclusions, and the overall integrity of the manuscript, regardless of whether AI-assisted tools were used.
2. AI Authorship Prohibition
AI tools, large language models, chatbots, and other non-human systems must not be listed as authors or co-authors. AJIST’s Author Guidelines require human accountability for authorship and the integrity of the submitted and published work.
3. Disclosure Requirements
Substantive use of GenAI or AI-assisted tools must be disclosed in the manuscript or accompanying declarations. The disclosure should identify the tool and explain its purpose sufficiently for editors and readers to understand how it contributed to the work.
Routine spelling or grammar checking that does not generate substantive content need not be disclosed unless the journal’s submission system specifically requires disclosure.
4. AI-Generated Images, Data, References, and Research Content
AI tools must not be used to fabricate, falsify, or manipulate research data, results, images, references, quotations, or evidence. These requirements operate together with AJIST’s Publication Ethics & Publication Malpractice Statement.
AI-generated references, quotations, factual claims, or other research content must not be included without verification against reliable original sources. Authors remain responsible for plagiarism, copyright infringement, confidentiality breaches, bias, error, misleading content, or other research-integrity problems arising from AI-assisted work.
Where AI-assisted tools are used in preparing or processing figures, images, visualisations, code, or data-related outputs, the resulting material must accurately represent the underlying research and must not create, remove, obscure, or alter information in a misleading way.
5. AI Use by Reviewers
Peer review must remain a human responsibility. Reviewers must exercise their own scholarly judgement and remain responsible for the content and recommendations in their review reports.
Reviewers must not upload unpublished manuscripts, figures, supplementary files, reviewer reports, author information, or other confidential editorial material to publicly accessible GenAI systems or AI services whose data-handling terms could compromise confidentiality. This reinforces the confidentiality requirements in the Peer Review Process.
6. AI Use by Editors
Editorial assessment and publication decisions must remain human decisions. Editors may not delegate acceptance, rejection, reviewer selection, ethical judgement, or other substantive editorial decisions to an AI system.
Editors must protect manuscript and correspondence confidentiality and must not upload unpublished manuscripts, reviewer reports, confidential author information, or internal editorial material to public GenAI systems or other AI services whose terms could compromise confidentiality.
7. Confidentiality of Manuscripts Uploaded to AI Systems
Unpublished manuscripts and related editorial materials are confidential. Authors, reviewers, editors, and journal staff should consider the data-retention, reuse, confidentiality, and disclosure terms of any AI service before entering manuscript-related content into it.
Reviewers and editors must not upload confidential manuscript or peer-review material to publicly accessible AI systems. Authors must also avoid entering confidential third-party information, personal or sensitive data, copyrighted material, or other restricted content into AI systems where doing so would breach legal, ethical, contractual, privacy, copyright, or confidentiality obligations.
8. Human Accountability and Verification
Use of AI does not reduce or transfer responsibility. Authors must verify AI-assisted content before submission; reviewers remain responsible for the integrity and independence of their assessments; and editors remain responsible for editorial decisions, peer-review confidentiality, and research integrity.
9. Non-Compliance
Failure to comply with this policy may be handled as a publication-ethics concern under AJIST’s Publication Ethics & Publication Malpractice Statement and, where relevant after publication, the Post-Publication and Accountability Policy. The response depends on the nature and seriousness of the concern.
