AI Use Policy
NUPH recognizes the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools and their increasing use in research, writing, editing, publishing, peer review, and content creation. While AI tools may support scholarly communication, their use must be transparent, ethical, legally compliant, and subject to full human oversight.
This policy applies to authors, editors, reviewers, and all contributors involved in manuscripts, books, journals, reports, policy briefs, conference proceedings, and other scholarly outputs published by NUPH.
1. AI Authorship
Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT and similar AI tools, do not satisfy the authorship criteria of NUPH.
Authorship carries responsibility and accountability for the accuracy, integrity, originality, and validity of the work. Since AI tools cannot take responsibility for published content, respond to questions about the work, approve the final version, or be held accountable for errors or ethical breaches, they may not be listed as authors, co-authors, or contributors.
Authors remain fully responsible for all content submitted to NUPH, including any parts of the work supported by AI tools.
Authors must properly disclose the use of AI tools in the manuscript whenever such tools have been used for activities beyond basic language correction or formatting. This disclosure should normally be included in the Methods section, Acknowledgements section, or another appropriate part of the manuscript.
2. Permitted Use of AI for Language and Editorial Support
AI tools may be used to assist with improving the readability, grammar, spelling, punctuation, structure, formatting, or clarity of human-generated text.
This type of use may include:
Authors do not normally need to declare the use of AI for these limited copyediting purposes, provided that the AI tool has not generated new scholarly content, arguments, analysis, conclusions, interpretations, data, references, or claims.
All AI-assisted edits must be reviewed and approved by the authors, and the final text must reflect the authors’ original work, expertise, and conclusions.
3. Use of AI for Content Generation
If AI tools are used to generate, draft, summarize, translate, analyze, interpret, or substantially revise scholarly content, this use must be clearly disclosed.
Examples of AI use that require disclosure include:
Authors must verify all AI-assisted content for accuracy, originality, relevance, and compliance with ethical and legal standards.
AI-generated references, citations, quotations, data, or factual claims must be independently checked. Authors are responsible for ensuring that no fabricated, inaccurate, misleading, plagiarized, confidential, or copyrighted material is included in the submitted work.
4. Required Disclosure Statement
Where AI use requires disclosure, authors should include a statement such as:
“The authors used [name of AI tool/version, if available] to assist with [specific purpose, e.g., language editing, summarizing literature, data analysis, drafting selected text]. All AI-assisted content was reviewed, verified, and approved by the authors, who take full responsibility for the final version of the manuscript.”
If no AI tools were used beyond basic spelling, grammar, formatting, or copyediting assistance, no disclosure is required unless specifically requested by the journal, editor, or publisher.
5. Generative AI Images, Figures, and Visual Content
The use of generative AI tools to create images, illustrations, photographs, diagrams, videos, animations, or other visual content raises legal, copyright, research integrity, and ethical concerns.
NUPH does not permit the use of generative AI-created images or videos for publication unless the use is clearly justified, legally acceptable, ethically appropriate, and approved by the editorial team.
This policy applies to, but is not limited to:
Generative AI images must not be used where they could misrepresent real events, people, places, evidence, data, experimental findings, security practices, forensic material, or official/public safety information.
6. Exceptions for AI-Generated Visual Content
Exceptions may be considered on a case-by-case basis in the following circumstances:
All exceptions must be clearly labelled within the figure, caption, or image field as generated or assisted by AI.
7. Non-Generative AI Image Processing
The use of non-generative tools to manipulate, enhance, clean, combine, or process existing images, figures, scans, or visual data must be disclosed where the changes affect interpretation, meaning, quality, clarity, or evidentiary value.
Examples include:
Such use should be described in the figure caption, Methods section, or another appropriate location. The original data or image should be retained and made available to the editorial team upon request.
8. AI Use in Research Data and Analysis
Authors may use AI tools to support research data analysis, coding, classification, translation, transcription, literature screening, or similar research processes only when the use is methodologically appropriate and transparently reported.
Where AI tools contribute to the research process, authors must describe:
Authors must not upload confidential, sensitive, personal, classified, restricted, unpublished, or third-party data into AI tools unless they have appropriate authorization, legal permission, and data protection safeguards.
9. AI Use by Peer Reviewers
Peer reviewers play a critical role in scholarly publishing. Their expert evaluations help editors assess the quality, originality, validity, rigor, and significance of submitted work.
Peer review depends on confidentiality, expertise, independence, and trust. Manuscripts under review may contain unpublished findings, sensitive information, personal data, confidential material, security-related content, or proprietary research.
For these reasons, peer reviewers must not upload manuscripts, figures, tables, supplementary files, or confidential review materials into generative AI tools or external AI platforms unless explicitly authorized by NUPH.
Reviewers may use AI tools only where:
If any part of a peer review report is supported by an AI tool, the reviewer must declare this use clearly in the report.
AI tools must not replace the reviewer’s expert judgment, critical evaluation, or responsibility for the review.
10. AI Use by Editors and Editorial Staff
Editors and editorial staff may use AI tools to support administrative, technical, or editorial workflows only where such use complies with confidentiality, data protection, copyright, and publishing ethics requirements.
AI tools must not be used to make final editorial decisions without human judgment.
Editorial decisions, including acceptance, rejection, revision requests, reviewer selection, ethical assessments, and corrections, must remain under the responsibility of qualified human editors.
Editors and staff must not upload confidential manuscripts, reviewer identities, author information, unpublished data, or sensitive publishing records into public or unauthorized AI systems.
11. Prohibited Uses of AI
NUPH prohibits the use of AI tools for:
Any breach of this policy may result in manuscript rejection, correction, retraction, notification to institutions, or other actions consistent with publication ethics guidelines.
12. Human Accountability
In all cases, humans remain accountable for the final submitted, reviewed, edited, and published content.
Authors, reviewers, editors, and contributors are responsible for ensuring that AI-assisted work is accurate, ethical, original, legally compliant, and properly disclosed.
Use of AI does not reduce or transfer responsibility from human contributors to AI systems, software providers, or technology platforms.
13. Policy Review
NUPH recognizes that AI technologies, legal frameworks, ethical standards, and publishing practices are developing rapidly.
This policy will be reviewed regularly and updated when necessary to reflect changes in technology, law, research integrity standards, publishing ethics, and institutional requirements.