AI Use and Disclosure

Routine use of AI for basic grammar, spelling, punctuation, formatting, or language improvement does not ordinarily require separate disclosure, provided that the scholarly content and meaning remain the author's own.

Authors must disclose substantive use of AI when it materially contributes to the preparation or development of the manuscript or research. This includes, where applicable, substantial text generation or rewriting, research design, data analysis or interpretation, coding, and generation or substantial modification of figures, images, or other visual content.

Where disclosure is required, authors should identify the AI tool used and briefly describe its purpose and contribution. The disclosure may be included in the Methods, Acknowledgments, or another appropriate section of the manuscript.

Human Responsibility and Authorship

AI tools, including ChatGPT, Claude, and similar systems, cannot be listed as an author or co-author.

Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, integrity, citations, data, figures, interpretations, and final content of their manuscript. AI-generated references, factual claims, data, quotations, and other information must be appropriately reviewed and verified by the authors.

Manuscripts must contain meaningful human intellectual contribution and oversight. Authors must not present AI-generated or AI-assisted material as independently produced scholarly work without appropriate human review and responsibility.

Authors are also responsible for ensuring that any AI-generated or AI-assisted figures or images comply with applicable copyright and intellectual property requirements, as the copyright status of AI-generated content may vary by jurisdiction.

Confidentiality and Responsible Use

Authors should not submit confidential, unpublished, personal, or otherwise restricted information to AI systems where doing so could compromise confidentiality, privacy, copyright, intellectual property, or research ethics.

This requirement also applies to editors and reviewers, who must not submit manuscript content to AI tools in a manner that would breach the confidentiality obligations described in the journal's Peer Review Process policy.

AI tools must not be used to generate or fabricate research data, results, findings, or conclusions and present them as genuine research outputs.

AI and Editorial Checks

AI-assisted or AI-generated content may be considered as part of IJMES's editorial and research-integrity checks, where applicable.

AI-content detection results are supporting editorial information only. An AI-detection result or percentage is not, by itself, conclusive evidence of AI authorship, plagiarism, or research misconduct. Where concerns arise, IJMES will assess the available evidence in accordance with its applicable editorial and publication ethics procedures.

Authors may optionally request a separate Plagiarism and/or AI Content Detection Report for their manuscript — see the journal's Article Processing Charges policy for applicable fees and details.

Related Policies

This policy should be read together with the relevant IJMES policies, including:

IJMES may review and update this policy as AI technologies and relevant scholarly publishing standards develop.