Artificial Intelligence Use Policy

Artificial Intelligence Use Policy

The OBJN recognizes that Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, including Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI), large language models, support systems for writing, translation, analysis, synthesis, code generation, images, and automation, have been progressively incorporated into scientific production, evaluation, and communication.

The use of these tools is permitted, provided it is done in an ethical, transparent, supervised, documented manner, and is compatible with the principles of scientific integrity, authorial responsibility, confidentiality, data protection, respect for research participants, veracity of sources, originality, methodological rigor, and preservation of public trust in science.

This policy applies to authors, reviewers, editors, and other participants in the OBJN editorial flow. Non-compliance may result in a request for clarification, corrections, rejection of the manuscript, suspension of the editorial process, retraction, or other appropriate measures, according to the journal's editorial policies and the recommendations of national and international organizations for ethics and integrity in scientific publications.

General principles

The use of AI must preserve the primacy of human responsibility. AI tools can support scientific, editorial, or administrative tasks, but they do not replace critical judgment, authorship, data interpretation, methodological decisions, ethical evaluation, peer review, or editorial decisions.

Users must verify the accuracy, currency, completeness, impartiality, and traceability of all content produced, reviewed, summarized, translated, analyzed, or organized with the support of AI. References, citations, data, images, codes, tables, results, and interpretations suggested by AI tools must be checked in reliable sources and, when applicable, in primary documents.

AI tools must not be listed as authors, co-authors, reviewers, or editorial managers. Authorship implies public responsibility for the content, approval of the final version, accountability for the integrity of the work, and the ability to answer questions, errors, corrections, or suspicions of misconduct.

Mandatory declaration of AI use

Authors must declare the use of AI whenever the tool has contributed substantively to any phase of the work, including conception, methodological design, bibliographic search, study screening, evidence synthesis, data analysis, code elaboration, translation, writing, rewriting, interpretation, production of tables, figures, images, abstracts, supplementary materials, or responses to reviews.

The declaration must indicate: name of the tool; version or model used; supplier or developer; approximate date of use; purpose; stage of the manuscript in which it was used; type of content inserted; type of content produced; form of human review performed; and measures adopted to verify accuracy, originality, confidentiality, and data protection. Simple spelling, grammar, punctuation, basic formatting checks, or minimal linguistic adjustments may dispense with a formal declaration, provided they do not alter the scientific content, argumentative structure, analysis, interpretation, results, conclusions, or intellectual contribution of the manuscript.

When AI is used as part of the research method, data analysis, evidence synthesis, image processing, code generation, or automation of methodological decisions, its use must be described in a reproducible manner in the Methods section.

Use by authors

Authors may use AI tools to support writing, translation, linguistic review, organization of ideas, identification of gaps, preliminary literature synthesis, manuscript structuring, code elaboration, data analysis, construction of flowcharts, creation of explanatory images, or improvement of textual clarity.

The use of AI does not exempt authors from full responsibility for the submitted content. The signatory human authors are responsible for the accuracy, originality, scientific validity, data integrity, methodological consistency, ethical adequacy, correspondence between citations and references, absence of plagiarism, respect for copyright, and compliance with this policy.

It is prohibited to use AI to fabricate, falsify, manipulate, or distort data, images, results, citations, references, reviews, ethical declarations, approval records, consents, authorship, conflicts of interest, or methodological information. It is also prohibited to present AI-generated content as if it were exclusively produced by human authorship.

The use of AI in research involving human beings, sensitive data, clinical information, images of participants, medical records, vulnerable communities, or identifiable databases must observe the applicable ethical standards, consent forms, data protection legislation, and approvals from the corresponding ethics committees. The USP Guide to Good Scientific Practices highlights that researchers must guarantee confidentiality and anonymity when applicable, and inform participants about the storage of their data.

Data protection, confidentiality, and intellectual property

Before using any AI tool, authors, reviewers, and editors must examine its terms of use, privacy policy, data retention conditions, possibility of history deletion, use of content for training, sharing with third parties, transfer of rights, limitations to subsequent publication, and intellectual property protection mechanisms.

Unpublished manuscripts, sensitive data, identifiable personal information, medical records, clinical images, audios, videos, non-anonymized databases, reviews, embargoed documents, confidential projects, original hypotheses, preliminary results, third-party materials protected by copyright, or any content whose retention, reuse, or training by the system could compromise authorship, scientific priority, confidentiality, or rights of participants and authors must not be inserted into external AI tools.

The use of institutional, corporate, professional, paid, or locally hosted tools may offer greater privacy and security control, but does not dispense with the verification of the terms of use. The choice of tool must consider whether there is a possibility to disable training with user data, clear history, prevent retention of interactions, restrict sharing with third parties, and preserve the ownership of the content. Wiley advises authors to check terms, ownership, data reuse, training possibility, and content protection mechanisms before using AI tools.

When there is a risk of exposure of sensitive data or confidential content, the use of AI must be avoided or carried out only in a secure institutional environment, with access control, use registration, and a guarantee that the data will not be retained, reused, shared, or used for training.

Use in images, figures, and visual materials

The use of AI in images, figures, illustrations, charts, flowcharts, visual abstracts, covers, supplementary materials, or visual representations must be declared whenever the tool has participated in the creation, editing, transformation, reconstruction, enhancement, or visual organization of the material.

It is prohibited to use AI to create, alter, complete, obscure, move, remove, highlight, or introduce elements into images representing primary research data, such as clinical images, participant photographs, diagnostic exams, x-rays, microscopy images, histology, western blot, patient images, observational records, or any visual material presented as empirical evidence.

AI tools may be considered to support explanatory images, such as flowcharts, timelines, conceptual diagrams, decision trees, process schemes, or educational illustrations, provided such images do not represent primary data, do not induce undue scientific interpretation, do not violate the rights of third parties, and are reviewed by the authors.

When any image is created or modified with AI support, the caption must indicate the tool used, version when available, purpose, type of intervention performed, and the authors' responsibility for the final review. The OBJN may request original files, raw images, intermediate versions, prompts, editing logs, licenses, or proof of authorization for use.

Use in evidence synthesis and systematic reviews

In systematic reviews, scoping reviews, meta-syntheses, meta-analyses, integrative reviews, and other evidence syntheses, the use of AI must be reported with special detail when the tool makes or suggests methodological judgments, such as study screening, eligibility evaluation, data extraction, risk of bias assessment, grading of the certainty of evidence, synthesis of results, or elaboration of conclusions.

Authors must state the tool, version, purpose, review stage impacted, justification for use, validation performed, limitations, possible biases, degree of human supervision, and strategies adopted to verify the results. The joint statement from Cochrane, Campbell Collaboration, JBI, and Collaboration for Environmental Evidence allows AI and automation in evidence synthesis provided they do not compromise methodological rigor, integrity, transparency, and human supervision.

Use by reviewers

Reviewers must treat every received manuscript as a confidential document. The use of AI in peer review must be restricted, transparent, and compatible with the OBJN editorial policy. Reviewers may use AI only for limited support in organizing their own review, grammatical revision, or linguistic clarity, provided they do not insert the manuscript, tables, figures, supplementary data, substantial excerpts, or confidential information into external tools that may retain, reuse, share, or train models with the content.

Scientific judgment, methodological interpretation, critical analysis, ethical evaluation, and the final recommendation must be exclusively human. If any AI tool is used, the reviewer must inform the responsible editor, indicating the tool, purpose, and guarantee that the confidential content of the manuscript has not been improperly shared.

The CNPq policy states that the use of artificial intelligence in drafting scientific reviews is not recommended. WAME warns that submitting manuscripts to chatbots can violate confidentiality, as prompts and content may be retained by the tool.

Use by editors

Editors may use AI tools for administrative support, editorial flow organization, formal screening, compliance verification, preparation of communications, linguistic support, or internal information organization, provided they preserve editorial confidentiality, data protection, and human supervision.

It is prohibited to delegate decisions on acceptance, rejection, request for revision, choice of reviewers, interpretation of reviews, suspicions of misconduct, issuance of retractions, expressions of concern, or any judgment of scientific merit to AI tools. Editorial decisions must be made by human editors, based on the manuscript, the reviews, the OBJN policies, and scientific integrity standards. Editors should not insert manuscripts undergoing evaluation, reviews, supplementary data, images, personal information, or confidential contents into external AI systems without authorization, institutional security, and a guarantee that the material will not be retained, reused, shared, or used for training. The editorial use of AI must be internally documented and communicated to authors when it has a relevant impact on the editorial process or publication.

Documentation and editorial auditing

The OBJN may request documentation on the use of AI at any stage of the editorial process. This documentation may include the tool used, version, purpose, approximate date of use, relevant prompts, output logs, human review mode, verification measures, privacy controls, and methodological justification.

The lack of declaration, incomplete declaration, deliberate omission, use of AI to fabricate content, improper insertion of confidential material into external tools, or presentation of AI-generated content as human authorship may be evaluated as an editorial infraction, without prejudice to institutional communication or other appropriate measures.

Guiding documents

The OBJN adopts this policy in dialogue with national and international recommendations, policies, and guides on scientific integrity, authorship, confidentiality, data protection, responsible use of Artificial Intelligence, and ethics in scientific publication. Among the consulted guiding documents are:

Declaration templates for submission

General declaration of AI use

  • The authors declare that they used [tool name, version, provider] for [specific purpose], in the stage of [writing/translation/review/synthesis/analysis/code/image/other]. After using the tool, all content was critically reviewed by the authors, who assume full responsibility for the accuracy, originality, integrity, scientific validity, and ethical compliance of the manuscript.

Declaration for use in method or analysis

  • The authors declare that they used [tool name, version, provider] as part of the research method, specifically to [describe function]. The use was carried out in [stage], with human supervision, validation of results, and independent verification. The procedures, parameters, limitations, and controls adopted are described in the Methods section.

Declaration for evidence synthesis

  • The authors declare that they used [tool name, version, provider] for support in [screening/extraction/organization/synthesis/classification/other] during the evidence synthesis. The tool did not replace the reviewers' judgment. All methodological decisions were verified by human authors, and the limitations of AI use were considered in interpreting the results.

Declaration for explanatory image

  • Figure [number] was prepared with the support of [tool name, version, provider] to schematically represent [concept/process/flow]. The image does not represent primary research data. The authors reviewed the figure for accuracy, originality, clarity, copyright, and ethical adequacy.

Declaration for translation

  • The authors used [tool name, version, provider] for support in translating excerpts of the manuscript. The translated version was reviewed by authors with mastery of the language and scientific content, who assume full responsibility for the conceptual fidelity, terminology, and final version of the text.

Declaration for reviewers

  • I declare that I used [tool name, version, provider] exclusively to support the textual organization and/or linguistic review of this evaluation. The manuscript, its tables, figures, data, or supplementary materials were not inserted into the tool. The scientific analysis, comments, and editorial recommendation are my sole responsibility.

Negative declaration

  • The authors declare that they did not use generative Artificial Intelligence tools or AI-assisted technologies in the conception, analysis, interpretation, drafting, translation, substantive review, image generation, code elaboration, or preparation of the manuscript.

Date of update: October 23, 2026