AI Usage Policy

Generative AI and AI-Assisted Technologies Policy
FOSTER — Journal of English Language Teaching
 

FOSTER: Journal of English Language Teaching recognizes the increasing role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and generative AI technologies in academic research and scholarly writing. Tools such as ChatGPT, GrammarlyGO, Google Gemini, and other AI-assisted technologies may provide useful support when used responsibly.

To maintain academic integrity, transparency, originality, confidentiality, and accountability, authors, reviewers, and editors are required to comply with the following policy.

Human Responsibility Remains Essential

AI may assist scholarly work, but it cannot replace human judgment, critical thinking, authorship, accountability, or editorial responsibility.

1. Permitted Use of AI

Authors may use AI and AI-assisted technologies in a limited and responsible manner to support manuscript preparation or research, provided that the authors maintain full intellectual control over the work.

Examples of permitted uses include:
  • Improving grammar, spelling, punctuation, and language clarity.
  • Supporting the organization or structuring of ideas and text.
  • Assisting with brainstorming or generating preliminary ideas, provided that the final intellectual contribution is developed and verified by the authors.
  • Supporting data analysis, coding, or visualization when AI is explicitly incorporated into the research design and its output is independently validated by the researchers.
  • Supporting other legitimate research tasks where the use of AI is transparent, appropriate, and subject to human oversight.
Human Verification Required

All AI-assisted content must be carefully reviewed, fact-checked, edited, and approved by the authors before submission. Authors remain responsible for the accuracy, originality, interpretation, and integrity of the final work.

2. Prohibited and Restricted Use

AI tools must not be used in ways that compromise academic integrity, authorship, originality, research validity, or publication ethics.

  1. AI must not be listed as an author or co-author. Authorship requires human responsibility, accountability, and the ability to approve the final manuscript.
  2. AI must not replace the authors' essential intellectual contribution, including the critical analysis, interpretation, evaluation, and formulation of the central scholarly argument.
  3. AI-generated references, fabricated citations, fabricated data, manipulated evidence, or unverifiable claims must not be included in a manuscript.
  4. Authors must not present AI-generated material as independently verified scholarly evidence.
  5. AI-generated or AI-manipulated figures, images, or artwork must comply with the journal's research and publication standards. Any substantive AI use in creating or modifying visual material must be transparently disclosed and must not misrepresent research evidence.
3. AI Disclosure Requirements

Substantive use of generative AI or AI-assisted technologies in manuscript preparation must be clearly disclosed. The disclosure should enable readers and editors to understand how AI contributed to the preparation or research process.

The disclosure should identify:
  1. The name of the AI tool or service used.
  2. The version or relevant date of the tool, where available.
  3. The purpose and nature of its use.
  4. The extent of human review, verification, and editing.
  5. Confirmation that the authors take full responsibility for the final content.
Example of AI Disclosure

“During the preparation of this work, the authors used ChatGPT (OpenAI, [version/date]) to improve English grammar and clarity. After using this tool, the authors carefully reviewed and edited the content and take full responsibility for the content of the published article.”

4. Responsibilities of Authors
  1. Authors remain fully responsible for the originality, accuracy, validity, and integrity of their manuscripts, regardless of whether AI tools were used.
  2. Authors must independently verify factual claims, references, quotations, data, calculations, and other outputs produced or assisted by AI.
  3. The final manuscript must represent the authors' own scholarly contribution, analysis, interpretation, and conclusions.
  4. Authors must ensure that AI use does not infringe copyright, confidentiality, privacy, intellectual property, or third-party rights.
  5. Authors are responsible for complying with the terms and privacy conditions of any AI tool they use.
5. AI Use by Reviewers
Confidentiality of Submitted Manuscripts

Reviewers must not upload submitted manuscripts, manuscript excerpts, review reports, data, tables, figures, or confidential correspondence into public or external AI tools. Submitted manuscripts are confidential documents, and uploading their contents may compromise authors' confidentiality, intellectual property, or data-privacy rights.

Reviewers remain responsible for the independent scholarly assessment of manuscripts. AI must not replace the reviewer's critical judgment or substantive evaluation. If AI is used in a permitted supportive capacity, such as improving the language of a review report, reviewers should ensure that confidentiality is maintained and disclose such use when required by the journal.

This principle is consistent with current publishing guidance that treats submitted manuscripts as confidential and prohibits reviewers from uploading manuscripts or parts of manuscripts into AI tools.

6. AI Use by Editors
  1. Editors must protect the confidentiality of all submitted manuscripts, review reports, author correspondence, and editorial information.
  2. Editors must not upload submitted manuscripts or confidential manuscript content into external AI tools.
  3. AI must not replace the Editor's independent assessment, editorial judgment, or final publication decision.
  4. Any permitted use of AI in editorial administration must maintain confidentiality, human oversight, and editorial accountability.

Current publishing guidance similarly requires editors to treat manuscripts as confidential and prohibits uploading manuscript content into AI tools during editorial evaluation.

7. References and AI-Generated Citations
  1. AI tools must not be treated as authoritative primary or secondary scholarly sources merely because they generate an answer or citation.
  2. All references included in the manuscript must be independently verified and traceable to credible academic sources.
  3. Authors must not include fabricated, incomplete, or unverifiable AI-generated references.
  4. Authors are strongly encouraged to use reference-management tools such as Mendeley or Zotero to maintain citation and bibliography consistency.
Verification Requirement

AI-generated references can contain incorrect or fabricated bibliographic information. Authors are therefore responsible for independently checking every source before including it in the manuscript.

8. Reference Requirements

Manuscripts should cite at least 20 relevant references published within the last 10 years, with appropriate representation of national and international scholarly literature, unless the nature of the study justifies a different reference profile.

Outdated, non-academic, unreliable, or unverifiable sources—including fabricated AI-generated citations—should not be used as substantive scholarly references.

9. Editorial Screening

Submitted manuscripts may undergo appropriate similarity screening, research-integrity checks, and other editorial screening procedures before or during the review process.

Where there are concerns about excessive dependence on AI-generated content, fabricated references, unverifiable claims, lack of original scholarly contribution, or other forms of publication misconduct, the Editor-in-Chief may request clarification or additional documentation from the authors. The manuscript may be rejected when the concerns are substantial and cannot be satisfactorily resolved.

AI Policy at a Glance
Authors May use AI responsibly with human verification and appropriate disclosure.
AI Authorship AI tools cannot be listed as authors or co-authors.
References All references must be independently verified and academically credible.
Reviewers Must not upload confidential manuscripts or review materials to external AI tools.
Editors Must protect manuscript confidentiality and retain independent editorial judgment.
Human Responsibility Authors, reviewers, and editors remain accountable for their respective work.
Integrity, Transparency, and Responsible AI

FOSTER supports responsible innovation in scholarly publishing while maintaining human authorship, academic integrity, confidentiality, and accountability.

 
FOSTER  •  Journal of English Language Teaching