Artificial intelligence (AI) and scholarly publishing ethics: A content analysis of journal policies

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have received significant attention since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. People are experimenting with AI technologies in different aspects of daily life, including the use of AI tools in the scholarly writing process. Researchers and journal publishers are debating the impact of AI technologies on the quality and accountability of scholarly works. Indeed, scholarly journals play an important role in the dissemination of research and should be advising authors on the appropriate and acceptable use of AI technologies in scholarly publishing. Yet very few studies have examined how journals are providing AI-related guidance to authors. This work-in-progress (WIP) research explores how scholarly journals advise authors about the use of AI in the scholarly writing process by conducting a content analysis of journal policies. Specifically, the study sample was comprised of the top 20 journals, identified using journal metrics provided by Google Scholar in the following subject areas: STEM, humanities, literature & arts, social sciences, and library and information sciences. Policies from these 80 journals were collected from publicly available websites and then examined in August 2024 to assess how journals are currently providing AI-related guidance to authors. The guiding research questions and content analysis focused on the following aspects: 1) The presence or absence of AI in the journal policy; 2) Definition / examples of AI; 3) Guidance on the use of AI for authors; 4) Guidelines about AI for peer reviewers. In this WIP poster, preliminary findings from the content analysis are presented.