AI & Generative AI Use Policy

Macaw Publications recognises the growing role of artificial intelligence (AI), generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), machine-learning systems, and other automated technologies in research and scholarly communication. These technologies may support legitimate academic work; however, their use must not compromise authorship accountability, originality, research integrity, confidentiality, intellectual property, data protection, citation accuracy, peer-review independence, or the reliability of the scholarly record.

This policy establishes publisher-level principles governing the use of AI and AI-assisted technologies by authors, reviewers, editors, guest editors, editorial board members, and publishing personnel across journals published by Macaw Publications.

Human Accountability • Transparency • Confidentiality • Research Integrity

POLICY SCOPE

Responsible Use of Artificial Intelligence

This policy applies to the use of generative AI systems, large language models, conversational AI, automated writing tools, AI-assisted image-generation or image-processing tools, coding assistants, automated analytical systems, machine-learning applications, automated reviewer-suggestion systems, and other comparable technologies used in connection with manuscript preparation, research reporting, peer review, editorial evaluation, publication production, or research-integrity assessment.

The policy applies to submitted and published content, supplementary material, figures, tables, code, datasets, peer-review reports, editorial correspondence, special issues, and other scholarly material where AI-assisted technologies have been used.

Discipline-specific journals may adopt additional requirements where particular uses of AI raise specialised ethical, methodological, clinical, legal, security, or reproducibility considerations.

CORE PRINCIPLES

Human Responsibility Remains Fundamental

AI-assisted technologies may support scholarly work, but they cannot replace human academic responsibility. Every submitted and published work must remain attributable to identifiable human authors who accept responsibility for its accuracy, originality, integrity, interpretation, and ethical compliance.

Human Accountability

Human authors, reviewers, and editors remain fully responsible for work produced or evaluated with the assistance of AI technologies.

Transparency

Material use of AI should be disclosed clearly enough for editors, reviewers, and readers to understand how the technology contributed to the work.

Confidentiality

Confidential or unpublished scholarly material must not be exposed to AI systems in a manner that may compromise authors' rights, privacy, intellectual property, or editorial confidentiality.

Accuracy

AI-generated outputs must be independently checked because such systems may generate inaccurate, incomplete, misleading, biased, or fabricated content.

Originality & Attribution

AI assistance does not remove the obligation to avoid plagiarism, acknowledge relevant sources, obtain permissions, and respect copyright.

Human Oversight

Automated screening, classification, recommendation, or detection systems must support rather than replace appropriate human editorial judgement.

AUTHORSHIP

AI Systems Cannot Be Authors

AI tools, chatbots, large language models, and other automated systems must not be listed as authors or co-authors.

Authorship requires accountability for the accuracy, integrity, originality, ethical conduct, scholarly interpretation, and final published work. An AI system cannot approve a manuscript, accept responsibility for its contents, respond to questions concerning research integrity, disclose conflicts of interest, or enter into publishing agreements.

Human authors remain responsible for all material contained in a submission, including material created, modified, translated, analysed, summarised, or suggested using AI-assisted technologies.

AUTHOR USE OF AI

Permitted Assistance with Mandatory Accountability

Authors may use AI-assisted technologies for legitimate scholarly purposes provided that their use is consistent with research integrity, applicable journal policies, disciplinary standards, copyright, privacy, confidentiality, and ethical requirements.

Language Assistance

AI may assist with spelling, grammar, readability, language correction, or formatting. Authors remain responsible for ensuring that such editing does not alter the scientific meaning of the work.

Manuscript Preparation

Where GenAI materially generates, rewrites, summarises, or restructures scholarly text, the use should be disclosed appropriately.

Coding Assistance

AI-assisted code may be used where appropriate, but authors must validate the code, document material use where relevant, and remain responsible for the resulting analyses and conclusions.

Research Methods

Where an AI or machine-learning system forms part of the research methodology itself, its use must be described with sufficient methodological detail to permit scholarly evaluation and, where reasonably possible, reproducibility.

DISCLOSURE REQUIREMENTS

When Authors Must Declare AI Use

Authors must disclose the use of generative AI or comparable automated technologies when such technologies have materially contributed to manuscript preparation, content generation, analysis, interpretation, coding, image generation, data processing, or another substantive component of the submitted work.

Straightforward spelling correction, conventional grammar checking, reference-formatting assistance, and routine document formatting that do not generate substantive scholarly content generally do not require a formal AI-use declaration unless the respective journal specifies otherwise.

Identify the AI tool or system used.

Identify the provider or developer where relevant.

Describe the purpose for which the technology was used.

Describe the extent of its contribution where the use was substantive.

Where AI constitutes part of the research methodology, report relevant model, version, settings, prompts, access date, or other reproducibility information as appropriate to the research.

AUTHOR DECLARATION

Recommended AI Use Statement

Example declaration

“During the preparation of this manuscript, the authors used [name and version of tool] for [specific purpose]. The authors reviewed and verified the resulting material and take full responsibility for the accuracy, originality, integrity, and final content of the manuscript.”

Authors should modify the statement so that it accurately describes their actual use. A disclosure should not be included merely as a generic statement where no relevant AI use occurred.

AUTHOR RESPONSIBILITIES

Verification of AI-Assisted Content

Authors must verify the factual accuracy and scientific validity of all AI-assisted content.

Authors must verify every citation, DOI, quotation, attribution, dataset reference, numerical value, and bibliographic entry generated or suggested by an AI system.

Authors must ensure that AI-generated or AI-assisted content does not contain plagiarism, unattributed material, copyright infringement, fabricated evidence, invented references, or misleading claims.

Authors must critically evaluate AI outputs for bias, methodological errors, omissions, inappropriate generalisation, and unsupported conclusions.

Authors must ensure that use of AI does not expose confidential, personal, clinical, proprietary, embargoed, security-sensitive, or otherwise restricted information without appropriate authorisation.

CITATIONS & SOURCES

AI Is Not a Substitute for Scholarly Sources

Generative AI output should not be cited as an authoritative scholarly source in place of the underlying literature, datasets, standards, documentation, or primary evidence. Authors should locate, evaluate, and cite the original and appropriate scholarly sources supporting their statements.

References generated or recommended by AI systems must be independently verified before submission. Authors remain responsible for ensuring that cited sources exist, accurately support the relevant claims, and are represented correctly.

IMAGES & VISUAL CONTENT

AI-Generated and AI-Modified Images

Research Images

AI must not be used to fabricate, add, remove, obscure, or misleadingly alter features in scientific images, experimental evidence, clinical images, microscopy, electrophoresis results, or comparable research records.

Methodological Use

Where AI-based image generation, reconstruction, segmentation, enhancement, or transformation forms a legitimate part of the research method, the procedure must be described transparently and validated appropriately.

Illustrative Content

AI-generated illustrative material should be clearly identified where permitted and must comply with copyright, privacy, consent, and journal-specific requirements.

Image Integrity

Adjustments intended solely to improve presentation must not selectively alter or misrepresent the underlying scientific information.

DATA & CONFIDENTIALITY

Protection of Sensitive and Restricted Information

Authors must evaluate the confidentiality and data-protection implications of any AI system before providing research information to that system.

Personally identifiable information, confidential participant information, unpublished proprietary data, restricted datasets, patient information, commercially sensitive material, security-sensitive information, or other protected information must not be entered into external AI systems unless such use is permitted by applicable consent, ethics approval, contractual obligations, institutional requirements, data-protection law, and the conditions of the AI service.

PEER REVIEW

Use of AI by Reviewers

Submitted manuscripts are confidential scholarly communications.

Reviewers must not upload a manuscript, manuscript extract, figure, table, supplementary file, author information, unpublished data, or confidential editorial correspondence to public or external generative AI systems.

Reviewers must not use generative AI to create the substantive scholarly assessment, recommendation, criticism, or judgement contained in a peer-review report. Reviewer expertise and independent human evaluation must remain the basis of peer review.

Limited use of conventional language-editing tools that does not expose confidential manuscript content or generate substantive review judgements may be acceptable where consistent with the journal's policy. Any material AI assistance in preparing a review should be disclosed to the editor.

EDITORIAL USE

Use of AI by Editors and Guest Editors

Editors and Guest Editors must not upload confidential submitted manuscripts or unpublished manuscript content to public or external generative AI systems.

Generative AI must not make acceptance, rejection, revision, desk-rejection, or other substantive editorial decisions.

Editors must independently assess manuscripts, reviewer reports, ethical concerns, conflicts of interest, and journal suitability.

Editors remain responsible for identifying and correcting inaccurate, biased, fabricated, or inappropriate output produced by any approved automated support system.

PUBLISHER & JOURNAL SYSTEMS

Automated Tools Used in Publishing Workflows

Automated technologies may be used to assist legitimate technical, administrative, quality-control, or research-integrity functions, provided that appropriate human oversight is maintained.

Similarity Screening

Automated similarity screening may assist editors in identifying textual overlap. Similarity scores alone do not establish plagiarism or misconduct.

Image Screening

Automated tools may assist in detecting possible image duplication or manipulation. Any identified concern should be assessed by an appropriately qualified human.

Reviewer Suggestions

Automated systems may assist with identifying potential reviewers, but reviewer suitability, expertise, identity, independence, and conflicts must be evaluated by editorial personnel.

Metadata & Production

Automated tools may support metadata preparation, formatting, accessibility, or production workflows where appropriate, subject to quality assurance and human verification.

Where Macaw Publications or an individual journal routinely deploys an automated or AI-based system in a manner that materially affects scholarly evaluation, research-integrity screening, or published content, the nature of such use should be disclosed appropriately.

Automated systems are advisory tools. Final decisions concerning manuscripts, allegations of misconduct, corrections, retractions, reviewer appointments, and other substantive editorial matters remain subject to human oversight.

AI-DETECTION TOOLS

Automated Detection Is Not Conclusive Evidence

Automated AI-content detectors may produce false-positive and false-negative results and therefore should not be treated as definitive evidence that an author used or did not use generative AI.

Where an automated tool raises a concern, editors should consider the relevant evidence, manuscript context, author explanation, research records, and other appropriate information before reaching an editorial conclusion.

Authors should not be accused of misconduct solely on the basis of an automated AI-detection score.

UNACCEPTABLE PRACTICES

Uses of AI That May Compromise Publication Integrity

Listing an AI system as an author or co-author.

Submitting fabricated or unverifiable references, data, quotations, results, participants, or research evidence generated by AI.

Using AI to disguise plagiarism, inappropriate text reuse, duplicate publication, fabrication, falsification, or other misconduct.

Generating or modifying scientific images in a manner that misrepresents the underlying research evidence.

Creating false reviewer identities, fabricated review reports, manipulated citations, or deceptive editorial correspondence using AI.

Uploading confidential submitted manuscripts or protected information to external AI systems without appropriate authorisation.

Failing to disclose material AI use when disclosure is required under this policy or the relevant journal's instructions.

NON-DISCLOSURE & POLICY BREACHES

Editorial Response to Inappropriate AI Use

Failure to comply with this policy is assessed according to the nature, seriousness, intent, and effect of the conduct on the reliability of the manuscript or published scholarly record.

Depending on the circumstances, the journal may request clarification, an AI-use declaration, supporting evidence, revised material, underlying data, original images, code, methodological documentation, or other relevant records.

Serious or deceptive use may result in manuscript rejection, withdrawal of editorial consideration, correction, expression of concern, retraction, notification of an institution, or another appropriate action consistent with the journal's publication-ethics procedures.

Editorial responses should be evidence-based and proportionate. The presence of AI assistance alone is not automatically research misconduct.

Rights and Attribution in AI-Assisted Content

Source Material

Authors must ensure that AI-assisted outputs do not reproduce protected third-party material without appropriate permission or legal justification.

Permissions

AI assistance does not remove authors' responsibility for securing permissions for copyrighted figures, tables, datasets, text, or other protected content.

Attribution

Relevant human scholarship and source material must be cited appropriately rather than replaced by references to an AI system.

Responsibility

Authors must be able to grant the rights required under the applicable publication agreement for all content included in their submission.

AI AS A RESEARCH METHOD

Reporting AI-Based Scientific Research

This policy does not prohibit legitimate research in artificial intelligence or research in which AI is an experimental, analytical, computational, diagnostic, predictive, or methodological component.

Authors should identify the AI system or model sufficiently to permit scholarly assessment.

Relevant model versions, training or validation information, datasets, prompts, parameters, software, and evaluation procedures should be reported where necessary for interpretation or reproducibility.

Limitations, potential bias, uncertainty, and validation procedures should be reported appropriately.

Research involving personal, clinical, biometric, or otherwise sensitive data must comply with applicable ethical, consent, privacy, and legal requirements.

POLICY DEVELOPMENT

Review and Continuous Updating

Artificial-intelligence technologies and scholarly publishing standards are developing rapidly. Macaw Publications therefore reviews this policy periodically and may revise it in response to changes in technology, research practice, publication ethics, legal requirements, and recognised scholarly publishing guidance.

The version of the policy publicly available on the publisher website constitutes the current publisher-level policy unless an individual journal communicates a more specific requirement.

REFERENCE FRAMEWORK

Recognised Guidance Informing This Policy

In reviewing responsible use of AI in scholarly publishing, Macaw Publications considers relevant guidance from recognised scholarly publishing and editorial organisations where applicable.

Scopus

Guidance encouraging journals to maintain a dedicated generative-AI policy and provide transparency regarding AI use in content creation, peer review, and publishing processes.

DOAJ

Transparency guidance concerning automated tools and AI use by authors, reviewers, editors, journals, and publishers, including human oversight.

ICMJE

Recommendations concerning AI-assisted manuscript preparation, authorship accountability, disclosure, confidentiality, peer review, and editorial responsibility, particularly where relevant to biomedical and health research.

Publication Ethics

Relevant internationally recognised principles concerning transparency, authorship, confidentiality, peer review, correction of the scholarly record, and responsible publication practice.

Reference to external organisations or guidance does not imply membership, accreditation, endorsement, certification, or indexing status unless such status is separately stated and independently verifiable.

POLICY INFORMATION

Publisher Contact and Policy Record

AI-policy and publication-integrity enquiries

Questions concerning this policy, disclosure requirements, or suspected inappropriate use of AI in submitted or published content may be directed to Macaw Publications.

Macaw Publications
H.No. 4-123/8/172, Road No. 1, Indraprastha Colony,
Hathiguda, Hayath Nagar, Hyderabad,
Telangana – 501505, India

Email: publisher@macawpublications.com

Policy version: 1.0
Effective date: 9 August 2026
Last reviewed: 9 August 2026

RESPONSIBLE AI COMMITMENT

Human Accountability at Every Stage of Scholarly Publishing

Macaw Publications supports responsible innovation in scholarly communication while maintaining that artificial intelligence must remain subordinate to human scholarly judgement. Transparency, confidentiality, verification, appropriate attribution, editorial independence, and human accountability remain fundamental wherever AI-assisted technologies are used.

Accountability • Transparency • Confidentiality • Integrity