AI Policy

(last updated: 6 July 2026)

Anything that is considered unethical in research and scholarly publication — such as faking or manipulating results or data, improper attribution or acknowledgment of sources, etc. — continues to be unethical, regardless of whether AI is used to achieve it, or not. The authors of a publication retain full responsibility and accountability in those respects.
See also our Ethics Statement.

Authors

If any AI(-based tool) was used in the research or preparation of the paper, this should be declared, and explained in the description of the tools or methods used.

Please consider the following example for the statement(s):
"The author(s) incorporated [NAME TOOL / SERVICE] into their research/writing workflow for [REASON]. Following this assistance, the author(s) performed thorough quality control and content revision as needed, maintaining full responsibility for all aspects of the published article."

Any requirements concerning research integrity, copyright and plagiarism continue to apply and are the full responsibility of all authors listed on the publication.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) does not qualify for the role of author and should not be listed as such.

Editors

Editors should keep in mind that the manuscript is provided under confidentiality. By uploading someone else’s unpublished work into an AI tool, it may become part of the training materials for that tool, which would be a breach of confidentiality. If an editor considers it indispensable to use an AI-based tool to support their editorial work, these tools should be absolutely secure and closed, to guarantee that none of the unpublished materials end up in a training set for the tool.

Referees

It is not permitted to use generative AI — such as ChatGPT etc. — to generate a review report on a manuscript. Reviewers are invited on the basis of their expertise and knowledge of what is going on in a specific research area, which we do not deem AI to possess. Furthermore, any checks/input provided by AI can be obtained by the publisher/editor or author themselves, if desired.

Reviewers should also keep in mind that the manuscript is provided under confidentiality. By uploading someone else’s unpublished work into an AI tool, it may become part of the training materials for that tool, which would be a breach of confidentiality. This also extends to the review report, which contains information from the manuscript.

It is permitted to use AI to assist with finetuning the language/style of the review report, but only if the tool used is absolutely secure and closed, and the user can guarantee that none of the text will end up in a training set for the AI tool.