AI Policy

Use of Artificial Intelligence in Scholarly Publishing

1. General Principles and Scope

Jurnal Sains Materi Indonesia recognizes that artificial intelligence (AI), generative AI, and AI-assisted technologies are increasingly being used in research and scholarly publishing. When used responsibly, these tools can support academic writing, improve communication, assist data processing, and facilitate various research activities.

The journal supports the responsible use of AI, provided that it does not compromise scientific integrity, originality, accuracy, confidentiality, transparency, or human accountability. AI tools should support researchers and publishing professionals rather than replace human critical thinking, scientific judgment, or intellectual contributions.

This policy is guided by the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and relevant good practices in scholarly publishing.

For the purposes of this policy, AI tools refer to digital systems, including large language models, machine learning systems, and AI agents, capable of generating, translating, analyzing, summarizing, or materially modifying text, code, images, data, or other content.

All authors, reviewers, and editors are expected to use AI responsibly and remain accountable for their respective contributions and decisions.

2. Guidelines for Authors

A. Authorship and Citation

No AI Authorship

AI tools cannot be listed as authors or co-authors of a manuscript. Authorship requires intellectual contribution, accountability, the ability to approve the final manuscript, and responsibility for addressing questions concerning the accuracy and integrity of the work.

Collective Responsibility

Human authors remain collectively responsible for the originality, validity, accuracy, and ethical compliance of the entire manuscript, including any content produced or modified with AI assistance.

Authors must ensure that all factual claims, calculations, references, interpretations, and research findings are accurate and properly supported. AI-generated content must not be presented as verified scientific evidence without appropriate checking.

B. Acceptable and Prohibited Uses of AI

1). Permissible Use Without Disclosure

Authors may use routine AI-assisted tools for basic spelling, grammar, punctuation, readability improvements, and reference formatting, provided that these activities do not alter the scientific meaning, research findings, or intellectual substance of the manuscript.

Disclosure is generally not required for such routine language and presentation assistance.

2). Permissible Use With Disclosure

Substantive AI assistance must be disclosed when it makes a meaningful contribution to manuscript preparation or research activities. Examples include:

Synthesizing or interpreting scientific literature.
Developing or substantially restructuring arguments, ideas, or manuscript sections.
Substantially translating or rewriting scholarly content.
Generating or modifying code used in research.
Supporting statistical analysis, data processing, modeling, or interpretation.
Creating explanatory illustrations, conceptual diagrams, or other AI-generated visual materials.

Authors must independently verify AI-assisted outputs, including factual claims, calculations, citations, analytical results, and interpretations. The final manuscript must reflect the authors' own scholarly judgment and accurately represent the research conducted.

3). Strictly Prohibited Uses

AI must not be used to:

Generate an entire manuscript or substantial portions of original scholarly analysis in place of the authors' own intellectual contribution and critical judgment.
Fabricate, falsify, or deceptively manipulate research data, results, images, or references.
Present AI-generated content or material derived from published works as original work without appropriate attribution.
Produce misleading scientific findings or conceal errors, limitations, or uncertainty.
Misrepresent authorship, research contributions, or compliance with publication ethics requirements.

The use of AI is not, by itself, evidence of misconduct. The journal assesses whether the work meets its standards for originality, scientific integrity, transparency, and responsible authorship.

C. Data Privacy and Confidentiality

Before entering unpublished manuscripts, research data, personal information, or other sensitive material into an AI tool, authors must review the tool's privacy, security, and data-handling practices.

Confidential, proprietary, or sensitive information must not be entered into third-party AI systems unless appropriate authorization, confidentiality safeguards, and applicable legal or institutional requirements are satisfied.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that AI use does not compromise research confidentiality, personal privacy, intellectual property rights, or other ethical obligations.

D. AI in Research Methods and Design

When AI, machine learning, or deep-learning technologies form part of the research design, data collection, processing, analysis, or modeling, their use must be documented in the appropriate section of the manuscript, usually Materials and Methods or Methodology.

Where relevant and available, authors should report:

The name, version, and provider of the AI tool or model.
The purpose of its use and its role in the research.
The nature and source of the input data, subject to confidentiality and licensing restrictions.
Relevant parameters, prompts, settings, and processing procedures necessary to understand or reproduce the work.
Validation procedures and methods used to verify AI-generated outputs.
The extent of human oversight and any relevant limitations.

The level of detail should be proportionate to the role of AI in the research and sufficient to support transparency, scientific evaluation, and reproducibility.

Authors are not expected to disclose information that is unavailable to them, such as proprietary model training data. However, relevant limitations should be acknowledged when they affect the interpretation or reproducibility of the research.

E. AI in Figures, Images, and Artwork

The use of AI in visual materials must preserve the accuracy and integrity of scientific evidence. The journal distinguishes between images representing primary research data and illustrations intended to explain scientific concepts.

1). Primary Research Images

AI must not be used to create, alter, enhance, obscure, or remove features in primary research images or other visual evidence in ways that change or misrepresent the underlying data. Examples include microscopy images, material characterization images, laboratory photographs, radiographic images, and other experimental records.

Standard adjustments to brightness or contrast may be acceptable when applied consistently and without obscuring, removing, or misrepresenting relevant information.

2). Data Visualizations

AI-assisted tools may be used to prepare charts, graphs, plots, and heatmaps, provided that the visualizations faithfully represent the underlying research data.

Authors must verify the accuracy of plotted values, labels, scales, statistical representations, and interpretations. The underlying data and analytical procedures should remain available for verification as appropriate.

3). Explanatory Images and Conceptual Diagrams

AI may be used to assist in creating flowcharts, schematic illustrations, and conceptual diagrams, provided that the author verifies their scientific accuracy and ensures that they do not misrepresent experimental findings.

Substantive use of generative AI to create or materially modify such illustrations must be disclosed in the figure caption or another appropriate location.

4). Graphical Abstracts and Cover Art

The use of general-purpose generative AI to create graphical abstracts is prohibited unless the editorial board has explicitly authorized an exception.

Specialized scientific design tools may be used where their licensing terms permit such use and the resulting visual material meets the journal's requirements for scientific accuracy and originality.

AI-generated cover artwork may be submitted for consideration only with prior written permission from the editorial board. All applicable copyright, licensing, and attribution requirements must be satisfied.

F. Disclosure of AI Use

When substantive AI assistance has been used, authors must include a section titled "Declaration of Generative AI and AI-Assisted Technologies" immediately before the References section.

The declaration should identify the AI tool used, its version where available, and the purpose for which it was used.

Suggested declaration:

"During the preparation of this manuscript, the author(s) used [name of AI tool and version, if available] for [specific purpose]. The author(s) critically reviewed, verified, and revised the AI-assisted output as necessary and take full responsibility for the accuracy, integrity, originality, and content of the published article."

Authors must ensure that the declaration accurately reflects their use of AI. The journal may request clarification when additional information is needed to assess compliance with this policy.

3. Guidelines for Reviewers

Peer review relies on independent expert judgment, confidentiality, fairness, and professional responsibility. Reviewers must comply with the following requirements.

Confidentiality of Submitted Manuscripts

Submitted manuscripts, figures, tables, supplementary materials, and editorial correspondence are confidential. Reviewers must not upload or share these materials with external generative AI systems unless the journal has explicitly authorized a suitably secure system and all applicable confidentiality, privacy, and intellectual property requirements are satisfied.

Independent Scholarly Evaluation

Reviewers must personally evaluate the originality, scientific significance, methodology, validity of results, interpretation, and contribution of each manuscript. AI tools must not replace the reviewer's independent expert assessment or serve as the sole basis for evaluating scientific merit.

Assistance in Preparing Review Reports

Reviewers must not use AI to draft or edit peer-review reports if doing so requires disclosing confidential manuscript content to an unauthorized system.

Where permitted by the journal, limited AI-assisted language support may be used to improve the clarity of a reviewer's own comments, provided that no confidential information is disclosed and the reviewer retains full responsibility for the report.

Any substantive AI assistance in preparing a review report must be disclosed to the handling editor.

4. Guidelines for Editors

Editors are responsible for maintaining a fair, transparent, confidential, and ethically sound editorial process.

Administrative and Technical Support

Editors may use appropriate AI-assisted tools to support routine administrative activities, such as document formatting checks, workflow management, screening of publicly available information, and reviewer identification based on relevant expertise.

Any use of AI for plagiarism screening, research integrity checks, or other technical assessments must be subject to appropriate human verification.

Protection of Confidential Information

Editors must not upload unpublished manuscripts, confidential reviewer reports, editorial correspondence, or other restricted materials into external generative AI systems unless the journal has explicitly authorized a suitably secure system and all applicable confidentiality, privacy, and intellectual property requirements are satisfied.

Human Oversight and Editorial Independence

AI may support administrative and technical tasks but must not replace the editor's independent scholarly judgment. Decisions to accept, reject, or request revisions must be made by the responsible human editor based on the manuscript, peer-review reports, journal policies, and relevant ethical considerations.

Editors remain accountable for the fairness, accuracy, and integrity of editorial decisions and must ensure that AI-assisted processes do not compromise confidentiality or introduce unjustified bias.

5. Enforcement and Compliance

The journal is committed to maintaining research integrity through a fair, transparent, and consistent approach to the use of AI in scholarly publishing.

AI Writing Detection

Manuscripts may be screened using AI-writing detection tools, such as Turnitin, as part of the journal's initial assessment process.

A reported AI-generation score exceeding 25% may trigger further editorial examination and a request for clarification from the authors.

However, an AI-detection score alone does not establish misconduct and will not automatically determine the acceptance or rejection of a manuscript. The editorial team will consider the available evidence, the nature of the AI-assisted content, the author's disclosure, and the overall integrity of the submitted work before making a decision.

Handling Potential Violations

If a potential violation of this policy is identified, the editorial team may request clarification, supporting information, or appropriate revisions from the authors.

Authors will be given a reasonable opportunity to respond to the concerns raised. The journal will assess each case individually, taking into account the nature and seriousness of the suspected violation, the available evidence, and applicable publication ethics standards.

Editorial Actions

Where a violation is established, the journal may take appropriate action, including requesting corrections or revisions, returning the manuscript for further clarification, rejecting the submission, or initiating a further investigation in accordance with the journal's publication ethics procedures and relevant COPE guidance.

Serious violations, including data fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, or unauthorized disclosure of confidential information, will be handled in accordance with the journal's applicable ethical procedures.

Continuous Improvement

As AI technologies and scholarly publishing practices continue to evolve, the editorial board will periodically review and update this policy to maintain its relevance, fairness, and consistency with applicable legal requirements and recognized publication ethics standards.

6. Policy Review and Updates

Jurnal Sains Materi Indonesia recognizes that AI technologies and their applications in research and scholarly publishing will continue to develop.

The editorial board will periodically review this policy to ensure that it remains appropriate to current research practices, publication ethics, data protection requirements, and technological developments.

Authors, reviewers, and editors are encouraged to consult the latest version of this policy before submitting, reviewing, or processing manuscripts.

The journal remains committed to a publishing environment in which technological innovation supports scientific progress while preserving human responsibility, research integrity, transparency, and trust.