Policy on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-enabled technologies

4.1. General Principles

The Bulletin acknowledges that artificial intelligence tools and technologies based on Large Language Models (LLMs) are becoming increasingly common in scientific research. In accordance with COPE recommendations and international standards of publication ethics, the Bulletin establishes the following rules for their use.

4.2. Authorship and AI

Artificial intelligence tools may not be listed as authors of scientific articles. Authorship entails responsibility for the content of the work, which cannot be attributed to software. All named authors bear full responsibility for the content of the manuscript, regardless of the tools they have used.

4.3. Permitted use of AI

Authors may use AI tools for the following purposes:

  • editing and improving the language and style of the text;
  • checking grammar and spelling;
  • machine translation as an auxiliary tool (provided it is subsequently professionally edited);
  • analysing data using AI methods — provided this forms part of the research methodology and is described accordingly in the article;
  • searching for and organising academic sources as an auxiliary tool.

4.4. Unauthorised use of AI

Authors are prohibited from:

  • using AI to generate the main content of an article without a substantial intellectual contribution from the authors;
  • presenting AI-generated text as original work without appropriate disclosure;
  • using AI to fabricate, falsify or misinterpret data and results;
  • using AI to generate references or bibliographic data without the author independently verifying them.

4.5. Disclosure of AI use

Authors are required to disclose any significant use of AI tools in the ‘Methodology’ section or in a separate ‘Disclosure of AI use’ section (at the end of the manuscript, before the reference list). The disclosure should include: the name of the tool, the version (if known), and the purposes for which it was used.

Example: ‘The tool [name of tool, version] was used to edit the linguistic formulation of individual text fragments. All scientific content, analysis and conclusions are exclusively the result of the author’s own work.

4.6. AI in peer review

Reviewers are advised not to use AI tools to assess manuscripts in a way that could compromise confidentiality (for example, by uploading a manuscript to public AI platforms). Editors may use AI for technical checks (for example, for plagiarism) provided that authors’ confidentiality is protected.