Just as artificial intelligence (AI) tools are changing how faculty teach and students learn, they are also raising questions about nearly every aspect of the scholarly writing and publishing process. New tools are being released so frequently, and their capabilities are developing so quickly, that it would be folly to try to round them up here — this page would become outdated almost immediately! However, it is possible to share some tool-independent information about how researchers and publishers are employing AI.

Icon credit: AI by Palash Jain from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0)

While AI tools can do many impressive things, they are shockingly bad at doing others. For example, AI tools are infamous for generating false information, and it’s important to be aware that these “hallucinations” extend to citations as well. Many AI tools spit out seemingly reasonable citations to journal articles and other scholarly works, complete with real author names and plausible titles, that are utterly fictitious. Some AI tools are specifically designed for research and can reliably generate citations that are both real and relevant, but using these tools typically requires a paid account. 

Similarly, many AI tools can summarize text or list key findings from publications. The summaries and distillations they offer are typically convincing at first glance, but they often reveal errors, biases, or distortions upon closer inspection. If you employ AI tools when searching for scholarly works or otherwise working on your literature review, be sure to also investigate the limitations of those tools, examine their output closely, and double-check any facts or citations they provide. Failing to do so could result in embarrassing and potentially career-damaging flaws in your own work.

For many researchers, the act of writing is one of the hardest, most time-consuming aspects of scholarly work. We stare at blank pages, agonize over what we want to say, and struggle to say it clearly. While it might be tempting to turn to AI tools at various stages in your writing process, it is essential to understand the implications of doing so — including the limitations you might be placing on your future publishing options.

For example, most reputable journals have policies regarding the use of AI tools in the creation of submitted manuscripts. (Those that don’t will almost certainly develop them soon.) These policies often allow only limited uses of AI and require authors to disclose in their manuscripts any AI tools they used, how, and why. Some journals disallow authors’ use of AI entirely. Regardless of policy specifics, many journals require authors to attest upon submission that they created their manuscripts in compliance with the policy. Authors who falsely represent their use of AI tools risk having their articles retracted if their deception is discovered. 

Following the position of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), journals also typically refuse to allow an AI tool to be listed as an author of an article. In addition to questions surrounding whether AI tools can contribute new knowledge, there is the issue of legal answerability for the contribution. According to COPE, “AI tools cannot meet the requirements for authorship as they cannot take responsibility for the submitted work. As non-legal entities, they cannot assert the presence or absence of conflicts of interest nor manage copyright and license agreements.”

Many journals also have policies that govern the use of AI tools by peer reviewers in their evaluation of a manuscript or development of a written review. Some journals disallow peer reviewers from employing AI at all. Others permit reviewers to use AI in some ways but not others, often with restrictions related to confidentiality and copyright (e.g., forbidding reviewers from uploading manuscripts to generative AI tools such as ChatGPT). By and large, journals that allow reviewers to use AI require them to be transparent about any such use.

Despite the fact that most journals constrain if and how authors and peer reviewers can use AI tools, many journals employ AI in their screening of submissions. For example, many journals put submitted manuscripts through AI-powered checks for plagiarism, image manipulation, appropriateness for the journal’s scope, etc. These checks are often built into the journal’s submission platform and run automatically upon submission.

There are two issues in the intersection of copyright and AI that every scholarly author should be aware of:

1. Copyright of AI-Generated Materials: In 2023, the U.S. Copyright Office issued Copyright Registration Guidance for Works Containing AI-Generated Materials. (During 2024 and 2025, the Copyright Office released a much more extensive report on copyright and AI, but the report does not invalidate the guidance document, which remains in force.)
   
   According to the guidance document, “When an AI technology determines the expressive elements of its output, the generated material is not the product of human authorship” and “is not protected by copyright” (p. 4). However, “individuals who use AI technology in creating a work may claim copyright protection for their own contributions to that work” (p. 5).
   
   Put differently, materials created entirely by AI are simply not copyrightable (by the builders of the AI tool, the creator of the prompt fed into the tool, or anyone else). And for works that consist of both AI and human contributions, the human-created portions are copyrightable, but the AI-created portions are not. In other words, if you want your scholarly writings to be protected by copyright, it is essential that you do the writing, not AI.
    
2. Publishers' Contracts with AI Companies: Several journal and book publishers have entered lucrative licensing contracts with AI companies, selling access to the works they publish so that they can be used in the training of AI tools. When publishers require authors to sign over their copyright to their writings, publishers do then have the right to monetize those works however they wish, but many scholarly authors have expressed outrage about their works being licensed in this way, without citation and with little or no remuneration from the publisher.
   
   If you’re also disturbed by the possibility that your scholarly work could be sold to train AI, be sure to read and understand the terms of your future publication contracts, both for articles and for books. In particular, be aware of the implications of the language about copyright and licensing!

Publishers’ policies regarding the use of AI, as well as their embrace of AI in their own editorial workflows, are certain to be a moving target. Regardless of your field, expect a lot of new and revised policies and practices to emerge in the coming years. 

When writing a manuscript, avoid problems by consulting the AI and ethics policies of the journal you plan to submit to — or, if you haven’t narrowed it down yet, consult these policies for all journals you might possibly submit to. If you can’t find a journal’s AI and/or ethics policies, check the website of the journal’s publisher, as many large publishers have blanket policies that apply to all their journals. Consult the policies again before submitting, both to double-check that you’re in compliance and to make sure that the rules haven’t changed. While you’re at it, review the full list of submission guidelines too. You don’t want your manuscript to be rejected simply because it doesn’t conform to formatting or other basic requirements!