Artificial Intelligence (AI) Usage Policy

Responsible Use of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Generative AI Policy

Ilomata International Journal of Social Science supports responsible AI use while maintaining human accountability, research integrity, participant protection, confidentiality, transparency, fairness, and scholarly independence.

HUMAN ACCOUNTABILITY AI DISCLOSURE CONFIDENTIALITY
✓ AI may assist manuscript preparation and limited research tasks. ✓ Meaningful AI use must be disclosed.
✓ Authors remain fully responsible for all content, analysis, interpretation, and conclusions. ✕ AI tools cannot be authors or co-authors.
✕ Reviewers/editors must not upload confidential manuscripts or participant data to public AI systems. ✕ AI must not replace human scientific, social, ethical, or editorial judgment.
1. Use of AI by Authors

Authors may use generative AI or AI-assisted technologies to support activities such as language improvement, literature organization, idea development, transcription support, preliminary coding, data exploration, visualization, or manuscript preparation. AI tools must not replace the authors' critical thinking, scientific judgment, social interpretation, theoretical reasoning, contextual understanding, reflexivity, ethical responsibility, or original scholarly contribution.

Authors are responsible for:

  • verifying factual accuracy and checking references generated by AI;
  • reviewing and substantially editing AI-assisted content;
  • checking for bias, hallucination, fabricated citations, stereotyping, discriminatory assumptions, or misleading social interpretation;
  • independently validating AI-assisted transcription, coding, classification, analysis, and interpretation;
  • protecting confidential, personal, culturally sensitive, copyrighted, politically sensitive, and unpublished data;
  • ensuring that identifiable participant information, interview transcripts, recordings, field notes, survey responses, or sensitive community data are not entered into public AI systems without lawful authorization and appropriate safeguards; and
  • ensuring that the final manuscript represents the authors' own scholarly interpretation and judgment.
Important: Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, integrity, fairness, participant protection, and ethical compliance of all submitted content, regardless of whether AI tools were used.
2. AI Disclosure

Meaningful use of generative AI in manuscript preparation, transcription, qualitative coding, survey-data processing, literature synthesis, visualization, statistical analysis, social-media analysis, or other research activities must be disclosed in a separate AI Declaration. The declaration should identify the tool or model used, its purpose, the tasks performed, and the extent of human review, verification, reflexive assessment, and scholarly oversight.

Suggested AI Declaration
The authors used [tool/model name and version] for [specific purpose]. All AI-assisted outputs were critically reviewed, independently verified, and substantially revised by the authors. AI was not used to replace human social interpretation, ethical judgment, or scholarly responsibility. The authors take full responsibility for the accuracy, integrity, originality, and ethical compliance of the manuscript.

Basic spelling, grammar, punctuation, or conventional language editing does not normally require disclosure. If AI forms part of the research method, transcription process, qualitative coding, text analysis, sentiment analysis, social-network analysis, predictive modeling, data processing, or statistical analysis, its use must be described in sufficient detail in the Methods section.

3. AI and Authorship

AI tools, chatbots, autonomous systems, and language models must not be listed as authors or co-authors. Authorship requires human responsibility for the integrity of the work, approval of the final manuscript, accountability for scientific and ethical content, and the ability to respond to questions regarding the research, participants, theory, methodology, analysis, interpretation, and conclusions.

4. AI-Generated Images, Figures & Social Research Visual Materials

Generative AI must not be used to create, manipulate, obscure, remove, or introduce features in participant photographs, fieldwork images, documentary materials, screenshots, archival materials, charts, figures, social-media captures, or other visual evidence in a manner that misrepresents the underlying research.

AI-assisted enhancement must not alter participant characteristics, contextual meaning, documentary evidence, social conditions, measured findings, or the evidentiary value of the original material.

An exception may apply when AI-assisted image analysis, computer vision, synthetic-data generation, digital ethnography, automated content analysis, or other computational techniques are part of the research design or methodology. In such cases, authors must describe the tool, model/version, procedure, validation process, source material, ethical safeguards, and its role in generating or interpreting research data in the Methods section.

5. Use of AI by Reviewers

Submitted manuscripts are confidential documents. Reviewers must not upload manuscripts, manuscript excerpts, participant information, interview transcripts, field notes, survey data, confidential datasets, supplementary files, or review reports into public generative AI systems.

Peer review is a human scholarly responsibility. AI tools must not be used to generate scientific assessments, independently evaluate theoretical or methodological quality, interpret participant narratives, determine social significance, or produce review recommendations. Reviewers remain personally responsible for the accuracy, fairness, confidentiality, independence, and integrity of their reports.

6. Use of AI by Editors

Editors must not upload submitted manuscripts, confidential correspondence, reviewer reports, participant information, sensitive social data, unpublished qualitative materials, or editorial decision letters into public generative AI systems.

AI must not replace human editorial judgment or be used to determine acceptance, revision, or rejection. Editors remain fully responsible for scientific evaluation, theoretical relevance, methodological assessment, ethical review, confidentiality, communication, and final publication decisions.

7. AI in the Publication Workflow

The journal may use appropriately controlled AI-assisted technologies for limited technical and administrative purposes, provided that confidentiality, participant privacy, fairness, research integrity, security, validation, and human oversight are maintained.

✓ Technical submission checks ✓ Duplicate-submission detection
✓ Research-integrity screening ✓ Reviewer matching support
✓ Copyediting and production assistance ✓ Identification of technical inconsistencies
✓ Metadata and formatting support ✓ Limited administrative workflow support
Human oversight remains mandatory throughout all editorial and publication processes.

Violations & Consequences

Misuse, undisclosed use, deceptive use, discriminatory use, inappropriate social interpretation, or confidentiality breaches involving AI may be handled under the journal's publication-ethics procedures. Depending on severity, actions may include request for clarification, requirement for additional validation, manuscript rejection, correction, retraction, institutional notification, ethics-committee notification where appropriate, or restrictions on future submissions.

Policy Governance

This policy follows principles of transparency, accountability, confidentiality, human oversight, participant privacy, fairness, non-discrimination, intellectual-property protection, data protection, reflexivity, social responsibility, and research integrity. It will be reviewed periodically as AI technologies, computational social-science methods, digital research practices, and international publication standards evolve.