Generative AI Submissions

The submission of content created by generative AI is discouraged, unless it is part of formal research design or methods. Examples of content creation include writing the manuscript text, generating other content in the manuscript, as well as using the AI to generate ideas that are presented in the submitted manuscript. Software that checks for spelling, offers synonyms, makes grammar suggestions or is used to translate your own words into English does not generate new content, and we do not consider it generative AI. 

If you choose to submit a manuscript with content created by generative AI systems, you must disclose and describe any use of these systems to do the following: 

  • Write the manuscript text 
  • Generate data, images, figures, citations 
  • Generate ideas used in the text 
  • Translate text other than your own words. 

In doing so, you will be accepting full responsibility for the text’s factual and citation accuracy; mathematical, logical, and common-sense reasoning; and originality. 

Disclosures can be made in the methods section AND among the references, as appropriate. Authors should specify:

1) who used the system
2) the time and date of the use
3) the prompt(s) used to generate the text
4) the sections(s) containing the text and/or the ideas in the paper resulting from generative AI use.

Additionally, the text generated by generative AI systems should be submitted as supplementary material.

While it is not possible to anticipate all possible iterations, an example of such a disclosure in the methods section could be: “In writing this manuscript, J.D. used OpenAI Chatbot on 23 February 2023 at 2:33 pm EST. The following prompt was used to write the introduction section: ‘Write a 300 word piece about health sciences libraries and the use of AI.’ The generated text was copied verbatim and is submitted as supplementary material.” 

Generative AI systems cannot be listed as an author because they do not meet the criteria for authorship and cannot share responsibility for the paper or be held accountable for the integrity of the information reported. 

This policy will be updated as things evolve.

We would like to acknowledge that our policy was greatly influenced by one published in Accountablity in Research. Thank you! Mohammad Hosseini, Lisa M. Rasmussen & David B. Resnik (2023) Using AI to write scholarly publications, Accountability in Research, DOI: 10.1080/08989621.2023.2168535