One of the most important things you can do when using AI as part of your research, writing, or publishing production is to keep a record of how you are employing it and make appropriate, transparent disclosures. This makes it possible reviewers and other researchers to fairly judge the rigor of your methodology, interrogate or engage more closely with AI-generated elements, and understand how to replicate your process or results. Disclosures may include, but are not limited to:
Intellectual Property Ownership: Generative AI must be to disclosed in order to register copyright for eligible elements of your work.
Funders: Funder requirements are still developing and very individualized at this point. However, it may put you in a difficult position if you utilized tools that were not scoped in the description of your work, including both the research and publication associated with the grant-funded work.
Your Readership/Research Community: It is important to disclose the use of AI, and the methods and extent of your use in order to enhance reproducibility and continue to foster trust among researchers and research users.
Human Subjects: Your institution may have a stated policy from IRB or another body regarding the use or disclosure of AI. Due to the nature of AI training models and the unpredictability of their outputs, AI should always be disclosed to research subjects.
Students: You should disclose to your students when and how you’re using AI on their work and your classes.
Karen Weaver, a librarian at the University of Waterloo, has proposed an Artificial Intelligence Disclosure (AID) Framework, which would offer a standard, machine-readable format into which authors could collate the tools used throughout a research and writing process as well as the ways in which they were employed.
Disclosures for the use of AI can take several forms, including a narrative description of the use of AI in your publication text, as a forward or afterward, in your methods section, or throughout your article as footnotes/endnotes. However, some publishers may also require you to cite AI tools that you have utilized. You should check publishers' policies for specific guidance; in the absence of specific citation formats, several of the major style guides have been updated to include citation formats for artificial intelligence.
