Generating Transparency

Conversations around Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) have proliferated in the LIS journal community since the late 2022 release of ChatGPT (Felländer-Tsai & Overgaard, 2023; Stokel-Walker, 2023). The profession’s conversations have run the gamut from wholeheartedly welcoming GenAI to categorically banning its use. While there are strong opinions at both poles, these conversations tend to conclude with the same compromise: requesting author and journal transparency (Gaggioli, 2023; Ganjavi et al., 2023; Staiman, 2023). This call for transparency stems from the overarching ethical concerns with GenAI around accuracy, bias, and authority (Walters & Wilder, 2023). With these concerns in mind, the editorial team of an academic journal detailed issues and potential solutions regarding the use of GenAI at every step of the publishing process, from proposal to publication. This poster presentation will outline one academic LIS journal’s process for developing a GenAI policy for authors, reviewers, and editorial staff. This poster will share background research and provide a model for how journals can protect their authors, reviewers, staff, and readers. By sharing our experience of creating thorough policy around the use of GenAI, we intend to support LIS journal editors as they work to provide our community with high quality, integrous information while mitigating the cultural, linguistic, and ideological biases that can arise in the use of GenAI.