Artificial Intelligence (AI) Usage Policy

Journal of Public Health and Pharmacy

The Journal of Public Health and Pharmacy (JPHP) recognizes that artificial intelligence and AI-assisted technologies may support certain aspects of scholarly research, manuscript preparation, language improvement, data processing, statistical analysis, editorial administration, and publication production.

The use of these technologies must remain transparent, responsible, confidential, lawful, and subject to meaningful human oversight. This policy applies to authors, reviewers, editors, editorial staff, and other individuals involved in the submission, evaluation, editing, production, and publication of manuscripts in JPHP.

1. Scope of Artificial Intelligence

For the purposes of this policy, artificial intelligence includes, but is not limited to:

• large language models and generative AI systems;
• chatbots and automated writing assistants;
• AI-assisted translation, paraphrasing, and language-editing tools;
• image, audio, video, illustration, and figure generators;
• AI-assisted statistical, computational, coding, modelling, or data-analysis tools;
• automated literature-searching, screening, summarization, or reference-generation systems;
• AI-assisted manuscript screening, editorial, metadata, indexing, or production systems.

2. AI Cannot Be an Author

AI tools, chatbots, large language models, and other automated systems must not be listed as authors or co-authors. They do not satisfy the journal’s authorship requirements because they cannot:

• take responsibility for the accuracy and integrity of the work;
• approve the final version for publication;
• respond to questions regarding the research;
• declare conflicts of interest;
• enter into publication, copyright, or licensing agreements;
• be held accountable for research or publication misconduct.

Only individuals who satisfy the requirements described in the JPHP Authorship and Contributorship Policy may be identified as authors.

3. Author Responsibility

Authors remain fully responsible for every part of a submitted manuscript, including material developed, revised, translated, analyzed, summarized, illustrated, coded, or formatted with AI assistance.

Before submission, authors must carefully review and verify all AI-assisted content because AI systems may produce information that is incorrect, incomplete, fabricated, misleading, biased, outdated, or unsupported.

Authors must ensure that:

• all statements, data, calculations, interpretations, and conclusions are accurate;
• all references and citations exist and accurately support the relevant claims;
• fabricated citations, quotations, data, participants, results, or sources are not included;
• AI-assisted content does not contain plagiarism or unauthorized copyrighted material;
• appropriate permissions have been obtained where required;
• confidential, personal, sensitive, clinical, proprietary, or protected information has not been improperly disclosed;
• the submission represents the authors’ genuine scholarly contribution and judgment.

4. Mandatory Disclosure of AI Use

Authors must transparently disclose any substantive use of AI or AI-assisted technologies during the preparation or conduct of the submitted work.

The disclosure must identify:

• the name and version of the AI tool, where available;
• the developer or provider of the tool;
• the purpose for which the tool was used;
• the part of the manuscript or research process affected;
• the extent of human review, verification, and revision.

The disclosure should be included in the Title Page and in the appropriate section of the manuscript. Information that may reveal author identity must not be placed in the Anonymized Main Document unless required for methodological transparency.

5. Location of AI Disclosure

Authors should report AI use according to its function:

6. Routine Language and Technical Assistance

Routine tools used solely for spelling correction, grammar checking, reference formatting, or basic word-processing functions generally do not require detailed disclosure, provided that they do not generate substantive scholarly content or alter the scientific meaning of the manuscript.

When a tool generates, substantially rewrites, interprets, summarizes, translates, analyzes, or materially changes scholarly content, its use must be disclosed.

7. Prohibited or Unacceptable Uses

The following uses of AI are prohibited:

• listing an AI system as an author or contributor with authorship status;
• using AI to fabricate or falsify data, results, participants, references, quotations, images, or other research materials;
• submitting AI-generated content without meaningful human verification and intellectual contribution;
• using AI to conceal plagiarism, duplicate publication, image manipulation, or other misconduct;
• generating false, misleading, fabricated, or unverifiable citations;
• using AI to impersonate an author, reviewer, editor, participant, healthcare professional, or institution;
• uploading confidential, personally identifiable, sensitive, proprietary, clinical, or unpublished information to systems without adequate protection;
• using AI in a manner that violates copyright, privacy, research ethics, data-protection requirements, or applicable law;
• using AI to manipulate or interfere with peer review, editorial assessment, or publication decisions.

8. References and Citations

Authors must verify every reference included in the manuscript. AI-generated references must not be accepted without direct verification against the original source.

Authors must confirm the accuracy of author names, article titles, journal titles, publication years, volume and issue information, page ranges, DOI information, and URLs.

Artificial intelligence must not be cited as an author. AI-generated output should not be treated as a primary scholarly source when the original evidence or source material is available.

9. AI-Generated or AI-Modified Images

AI-generated or AI-modified images, figures, illustrations, audio, or video must not be used to misrepresent research observations, pharmaceutical formulations, laboratory findings, clinical findings, participants, experimental results, or source data.

Where such material is scientifically justified and permitted, authors must disclose:

• the AI tool and version used;
• the purpose and process of generation or modification;
• the extent of human intervention;
• the source and ownership status of the underlying material;
• any validation procedures performed.

The journal may request original files, source data, prompts, processing records, image metadata, or other documentation when necessary to assess authenticity and integrity.

10. AI in Research Methods and Data Analysis

When AI is used as part of the research methodology, authors must describe its use with sufficient transparency to permit scientific assessment and, where feasible, reproducibility.

The Methods section should report, where applicable:

• the tool, model, software, version, and provider;
• the date or period of access;
• input data and preprocessing procedures;
• prompts, parameters, settings, algorithms, or decision rules relevant to reproducibility;
• training, validation, testing, and external-validation procedures;
• human oversight, expert review, and verification;
• known limitations, uncertainty, performance characteristics, and potential bias;
• ethical approval, participant consent, confidentiality safeguards, and data-protection measures where applicable.

11. Confidentiality, Privacy, and Data Protection

Authors must not upload confidential manuscript information, unpublished data, identifiable participant information, patient information, proprietary materials, copyrighted content, restricted pharmaceutical data, or controlled research data to an AI system unless they are legally authorized to do so and the system provides appropriate confidentiality and data-protection safeguards.

Authors are responsible for understanding how an AI provider stores, processes, reuses, transfers, retains, or uses submitted information for model training.

12. Use of AI by Peer Reviewers

Manuscripts and associated review materials are confidential and privileged communications. Reviewers must not upload a manuscript, supplementary file, review report, author information, source data, or editorial correspondence to an external AI system unless prior permission has been obtained from the journal and confidentiality is demonstrably protected.

Reviewers must personally evaluate the manuscript and remain fully responsible for the accuracy, fairness, confidentiality, independence, and intellectual content of their review.

Any permitted use of AI in preparing a review must be disclosed to the editor, including the tool used and its purpose. AI must not independently determine the reviewer’s recommendation.

13. Use of AI by Editors and Editorial Staff

Editors and editorial staff must protect the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts, author identities, reviewer identities, editorial correspondence, ethical documents, and unpublished research.

Confidential submission materials must not be uploaded to external AI systems when confidentiality, data security, intellectual-property protection, and controlled retention cannot be assured.

AI may support limited administrative, similarity-screening, copyediting, metadata, formatting, or production functions when appropriate safeguards exist. Final editorial decisions must always be made by qualified human editors.

AI must not independently accept, reject, rank, prioritize, or make final decisions on manuscripts.

14. Human Editorial Oversight

All editorial judgments, peer-review assessments, methodological evaluations, ethical evaluations, and publication decisions must remain under meaningful human control.

Editors remain accountable for:

• the selection of reviewers;
• the interpretation of reviewer reports;
• the assessment of originality, methodological rigor, and scientific validity;
• the management of conflicts of interest;
• decisions regarding acceptance, revision, or rejection;
• the handling of complaints, appeals, corrections, expressions of concern, and retractions.

15. AI-Detection Tools

The journal may use technological tools as part of manuscript screening. However, the output of an AI-detection system will not ordinarily be treated as conclusive evidence of misconduct because such systems may produce inaccurate, uncertain, biased, or misleading results.

Any concern regarding undisclosed or inappropriate AI use will be assessed through editorial review, examination of available evidence, communication with the authors, and applicable publication-ethics procedures.

16. Undisclosed or Inappropriate AI Use

Failure to disclose substantive AI use, submission of fabricated AI-generated material, breach of confidentiality, false citations, plagiarism, data manipulation, image manipulation, or other inappropriate use may be treated as a breach of publication ethics.

Depending on the nature, seriousness, evidence, and stage of the case, JPHP may:

• request clarification, source materials, original data, prompts, or processing records;
• require revision or correction of the AI disclosure;
• suspend the editorial process;
• reject the manuscript;
• refer the matter to the authors’ institution, ethics committee, funder, or another responsible body;
• publish a correction, expression of concern, or retraction;
• take other proportionate action under the journal’s Publication Ethics policies.