Last updated: August 2026

1. Purpose and Scope

The Journal of Educational Research and Practice (JERP) recognises that generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and other AI-assisted technologies may support research and scholarly communication. However, their use may also create risks related to accuracy, bias, attribution, confidentiality, intellectual property, research integrity, and accountability.

This policy applies to authors, reviewers, editors, and other individuals involved in manuscript preparation, submission, peer review, editorial decision making, and publication. This is informed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Position Statement on Authorship and AI Tools , the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors Recommendations on the Use of Artificial Intelligence in Publishing , the STM Recommendations for a Classification of AI Use in Academic Manuscript Preparation , and the STM White Paper on Generative AI in Scholarly Communications .

The policy covers both the use of AI in conducting research and its use for preparing or evaluating manuscripts.

2. Fundamental Principles

The JERP applies the following principles:

1. AI systems cannot be recognised as authors or contributors because they cannot assume responsibility for published work, approve a manuscript, manage copyright and licencing agreements, or declare competing interests.
2. Human authors remain fully accountable for the accuracy, originality, validity, integrity, and appropriate attribution of all submitted content, including materials produced or modified with AI assistance.
3. AI must not replace human intellectual judgement, critical analysis, methodological responsibility, peer review assessment, or editorial decision-making.
4. The use of AI must not compromise participants’ rights, privacy, confidentiality, intellectual property, copyright, or data protection.
5. AI-generated output must be critically evaluated because it may contain errors, biases, fabricated information, inappropriate attributions, or non-existent references.

3. Uses That Do Not Require Disclosure

Authors may use AI-assisted tools without disclosure solely for basic mechanical or linguistic assistance that does not generate new scholarly content or alter the intellectual substance of the manuscript. Such uses include:

1. correcting spelling, punctuation, and grammar.
2. applying consistent formatting and reference styles;
3. making minor improvements to sentence-level readability without changing the meaning;
4. using conventional bibliographic databases, search engines, or reference-management software that does not generate substantive content; and
5. perform routine file conversion or document formatting tasks.

The authors remain responsible for reviewing all changes. If a tool substantially rewrites, expands, interprets, or generates content, its use falls under the category of mandatory disclosure.

4. Uses Requiring Disclosure

Authors must disclose any use of GenAI or AI-assisted technology that contributes substantively to the research or manuscript. This includes, but is not limited to:

1. drafting or generating the manuscript text;
2. Substantively rewriting, expanding, paraphrasing, or restructuring content
3. scholarly text translation using generative AI
4. synthesising literature or summarising sources;
5. discovery, recommendation, compilation, or generation of references;
6. developing research questions, conceptual frameworks, instruments, or methodological procedures, and
7. collecting, processing, coding, classifying, or analysing data;
8. generating, debugging, refining, or interpreting the computer code;
9. interpreting findings or supporting the development of conclusions
10. generating or substantially modifying tables, diagrams, visualisations, illustrations, or other graphical content; and
11. producing synthetic data or simulations, where these form a legitimate and explicitly reported part of the research design.

The use of AI in research design, data processing, analysis, coding, simulation, or interpretation must also be described in sufficient detail in the Methods section to permit evaluation and, where applicable, the reproducibility.

The use of generative AI to identify or recommend references does not relieve authors of their obligation to locate, read and verify the original sources. The AI output must not be cited as an authoritative source unless the AI system or its output is the object of the study.

5. Required AI Declaration

When disclosure is required, authors must include a separate statement entitled Declaration of Generative AI and AI-Assisted Technologies in the declarations section of the manuscript.

The declaration must identify the following:

1. the name of the tool;
2. provider, and model or version, where available
3. the purpose for which it was used.
4. the parts of the research or manuscript that are affected;
5. the nature and extent of the AI contribution; and
6. human review, verification, and revision were undertaken.

Where necessary for methodological transparency or reproducibility, the authors should also report the date of use and provide relevant prompts, outputs, parameters, or a description of the prompting procedure in the Methods or Supplementary Materials. Authors must not disclose confidential, personal, or legally protected information when reporting the prompts or outputs.

A suitable declaration is as follows: “During the preparation of this work, the author(s) used [tool, model/version, and provider] for [specific purposes]. The output was reviewed, verified, and edited by the author(s), who took full responsibility for the accuracy, originality, integrity, and final content of the article.”

Where AI was used as part of the research method, the declaration should refer to the relevant subsection of the Methods.

Authors who have used AI only for the basic activities listed in Section 3 are not required to provide this declaration.

6. Prohibited Uses

The JERP prohibits the use of AI for the following:

1. qualifies for or receives authorship;
2. fabricate, falsify, or misrepresent data, evidence, quotations, citations, references, results or research procedures;
3. create fictitious participant responses and present them as data obtained from human participants;
4. substituting synthetic data for missing empirical data without an explicitly justified and transparently reported methodological basis;
5. manipulating research images, recordings, transcripts, or results in a manner that distorts the original evidence;
6. generate references that the authors have not verified against authentic and accessible sources
7. concealing plagiarism, duplicate publication, inappropriate text recycling, or other breaches of research integrity;
8. make autonomous ethical, scholarly, peer-review, and editorial decisions;
9. disclose personal, sensitive, confidential, copyrighted, or unpublished material to an AI system without appropriate authorisation and safeguards; or
10. misrepresents AI-generated content as entirely human-produced, where disclosure is required.

Synthetic data, simulated participants, or AI-generated interactions may be studied as legitimate objects or methods of research, but they must be clearly identified as synthetic and must never be represented as responses from actual human participants.

7. Images, Figures, Data, and Code

AI-generated or AI-modified conceptual illustrations, diagrams, visualisations, and code may be considered where their use is scientifically justified, transparently disclosed, and consistent with copyright and licencing requirements.

AI must not be used to fabricate or misleadingly alter photographic evidence, participant materials, empirical observations, diagnostic images, numerical results, or any other research records. Any permitted AI-generated visual content must be clearly labelled in the figure caption and explained in the Methods or AI declaration, as appropriate.

Authors must verify the accuracy, security, licencing conditions, and reproducibility of AI-assisted code, analyses, and visualisations.

8. Responsibilities of Peer Reviewers

The submitted manuscripts and associated files are confidential. Reviewers must not upload a manuscript, abstract, figure, table, dataset, supplementary file, or any identifiable part of the submission to a public or external AI system.

Reviewers must not use AI for the following:

1. summarise or analyse a confidential manuscript;
2. evaluate its originality, methodology, validity, or contribution.
3. generate substantive reviewer comments or recommendations; or
4. determine whether to accept, revise, or reject the manuscript.

Limited language correction of a reviewer’s independently written report may be acceptable only when no confidential manuscript content is disclosed to the tool. Reviewers remain fully responsible for the substance, accuracy, tone, and confidentiality of their report.

Suspected inappropriate or undisclosed AI use by an author should be reported confidentially to the handling editor of the journal. Reviewers should not make accusations directly to the authors or rely solely on an AI detection score.

9. Responsibilities of Editors

Editors must protect the confidentiality and intellectual property rights of submitted manuscripts. They must not upload unpublished manuscripts or associated materials to external AI systems unless the system has been formally authorised by the journal, provides appropriate confidentiality and data protection safeguards, and its use is consistent with the journal’s published procedures.

AI must not make or determine editorial decisions of any kind. Editors remain solely responsible for the manuscript assessment, reviewer selection, interpretation of reviewer reports, communication with authors, and final editorial decisions.

Any journal-approved AI system used for administrative screening or workflow support must operate under human oversight and must not replace the substantive editorial evaluation.

10. Suspected Undisclosed or Inappropriate AI Use

JERP does not apply a fixed percentage or AI detection threshold to determine whether a manuscript has breached this policy. Automated AI detection tools may produce false-positive or otherwise unreliable results and must not serve as the sole basis for rejection, correction, or retraction.

Where concerns arise, the editor will consider the manuscript, available evidence, nature of the suspected use, and the author’s explanation. Cases will be handled fairly and confidentially in accordance with the relevant COPE guidance and JERP’s research integrity procedures.

Undisclosed substantive use, fabrication, falsification, breach of confidentiality, or other inappropriate AI use may result in a request for clarification or revision, rejection of the manuscript, correction of the published article, retraction, or other appropriate action.

11. Policy Review

The JERP will review this policy at least annually and may revise it earlier in response to significant developments in AI technology, research integrity standards, legal requirements, or international reporting guidance.

Through this policy, the JERP supports responsible innovation while preserving transparency, human accountability, confidentiality, intellectual ownership, and integrity in educational research.