Use of artificial intelligence

Editorial Policy

  1. Editors and reviewers are prohibited from uploading manuscripts under review to generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools or using other AI technologies or functions that may lead to a breach of confidentiality.
  2. Editors and reviewers are prohibited from using AI tools to write comments or reports on manuscript review.
  3. The editorial board expects authors to have read the editorial policy on the use of AI tools, which is given below, before submitting a manuscript. When working with a manuscript, the editor draws the authors’ additional attention to the rules declared by the editorial board regarding the use of AI tools, which are given below.
  4. If authors have not properly read the rules for the use of AI tools when writing and submitting a manuscript, this does not exempt them from responsibility for the undeclared or prohibited use of AI tools.
  5. All manuscripts submitted for review are checked for the use of AI tools:
    – by the Pangram and the Turnitin programs immediately after sending the manuscript and before publication. The result of the check by programs is additionally evaluated by the editor;
    – by reviewers at the double-blind review stage.
    The editorial board reserves the right not to send authors full reports on the check for the use of AI tools.
  6. In case of detection of undeclared and/or improper use of AI tools and if such use does not exceed 25%, the editorial board sends a request to the authors for additional justification of the use of AI tools.
  7. In case of detection of undeclared and/or improper use of AI tools in the amount of more than 25%, the manuscript will be rejected.

For authors

  1. Any use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools should only be done under full human control. Authors of the manuscript should carefully review and edit the output, as AI can generate results that may be incorrect, incomplete, or biased, but appear authoritative.
  2. Any use of AI tools, including large language models (LLMs), other than grammar, spelling, and punctuation checking, should be declared in the appropriate section of the article. The declaration should include the name and version number of the AI tool(s), the part of the article or study in which the AI tool(s) was used, the purpose of using the AI tool(s), a description of the human review process, and the impact on the conclusions reached in the study.
  3. Authors of the manuscript should not list AI and AI-enabled technologies as authors or co-authors, nor should they cite AI as an author.
  4. Authors should check the terms of use of AI tools that they wish to use and be sure that the materials provided by them are used only for the purposes set by the authors and that they do not grant AI tools any other rights, including the right to learn. Authors should make sure that the result they obtained using the AI tool can be freely used by them, including for further publication within the framework of an article that will be placed in the public domain.
  5. When submitting an article manuscript, authors should make sure that AI tools have not been used to write any of the substantive parts of the manuscript. Any undeclared, inappropriate or prohibited use of AI tools by the editors, detected at any stage of manuscript review or after publication of the article, will be considered data manipulation and may lead to refusal of acceptance for publication or withdrawal of the article after publication.
  6. When submitting a manuscript, authors must ensure that their use of AI tools does not exceed 25% of the entire article and that such use corresponds to the tasks permitted by the editorial board.
    Below is a table containing the main tasks that are prohibited or permitted to be performed using AI tools.
    If authors have doubts about whether a method or result obtained using AI tools is permitted by the journal, they can contact the editorial board with this question before submitting the manuscript. In this case, a detailed description of the use of AI tools will be required.

AI use

Example of using an AI tool

Allowed?

Manuscript text

Stylist editing of manuscript text

Shortening sentences, adapting the manuscript text to a scientific style, etc.

NO

Grammar editing

Checking grammar, spelling, punctuation without changing the text

YES

Translation

Translating the manuscript text

NO

Presenting AI-generated content as if it were original research data/results from non-machine sources

Using functions, tools or technologies of AI tools aimed at adapting the text written by AI to the style of the text written by a person

NO

Structured sections of the manuscript

Writing an abstract

Writing, supplementing, shortening or any other actions to achieve a result in the form of generating the full or partial text of the annotation using AI tools

NO

Generating ideas

Creating or writing all or part of the hypothesis, goal, objectives of the study, research plan

NO

Creating an introduction

Creating or writing all or part of the Introduction section

NO

Finding sources for a literature review

Searching for sources using keywords and criteria entered by the authors, for example, only open access sources or sources from the last 5 years

YES

Creating a bibliography

Although searching for sources for the reference list using AI tools is allowed, the final version of the reference list must be checked by the authors, as AI can generate authoritative results that may be incorrect, incomplete or biased

NO

Writing a literature review

Analysis of sources found using AI tools or provided by the authors; identification of scientific novelty and gaps in the sources being analyzed; partial or complete description of the sources

NO

Preliminary methodology development

Generation of methodological approaches or identification of viable models for the initial proposal for further testing by the authors during the study

YES

Creating and describing a methodology

Creation or writing of all or part of the Materials and Methods section

NO

Ethical and social analysis

Creation or monitoring compliance with ethical permissions and/or confidentiality

NO

Data generation and management

Collection, validation, cleaning, curation, analysis, reproducibility check, organization of data

NO

Describing research results

Creation or writing of all or part of the Research Results section

NO

Creating a discussion of the results

Identification of advantages and disadvantages; comparison with results obtained by other scientists; creation or writing of limitations of the conducted study; creation or writing of the practical significance of the study; creating or writing prospects for further research

NO

Creating conclusions

Creating or writing all or part of the Conclusions section

NO

Technical and visual components of the manuscript

Creating code

Generating code for the study

NO

Editing code

Improving the original code that was created by the authors

YES

Data visualization

Visualizing the original author's data in the form of figures, graphs, diagrams or tables

YES

Creating images

Creating images of actual installations or samples, images from a microscope, images of the results of experimental studies

NO

Editing images

Darkening, moving, removing or adding a certain feature to an image or figure

NO

Adjusting brightness, contrast, color balance, size of inscriptions

YES

Visualizing a graphical abstract

Combining several original author's images for presentation as a graphic annotation; creating a graphic annotation based on the original author's data (for example, displaying table data in the form of diagrams)

YES

Creating a graphical abstract

Creating an image based on a text query without using the original author's data

NO

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