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Policy on Plagiarism, Originality, and AI 

Any work submitted for publication must be the original work of the submitting author(s). By submitting for publication, the author(s) take responsibility for the accuracy and integrity of all information and ideas within the submission. As such, all submissions will be screened through iThenticate to support Inquiry and Innovation’s integrity, and any submission found to use someone else’s ideas, words, or research without (sufficient) citation will be automatically rejected.

Inquiry and Innovation’s rules surrounding AI use focus on the distinction between small-scale pattern recognition and generative AI (gen-AI) models. Conversely, AI-generated text is not permitted, nor may AI be a co-author. Authors should be aware that gen-AI tools are prone to inaccuracies, copyright violations, biases, and other issues that would degrade the quality of one’s work. Permissible AI-usage for journal submissions includes Grammarly, spell-checkers, or other such software  that provides sentence-level wording and editing assistance. This type of use requires neither disclosure nor citation.  

All other uses of large language models (LLMs) or other AI-technologies must be properly cited (see APA guidelines), disclosed, and described in the submission. This description must include:

  1. The technology used,
  2. The time and date of use,
  3. A brief description of the use’s purpose(s),
  4. A summary of the steps taken to verify information, minimize bias, or otherwise address AI inaccuracy issues, thereby maintaining the text’s human authorship and the reader’s trust.

Generally, AI-generated images have unresolved copyright and legal issues; thus, to abide by US copyright law, The Journal will not publish AI-generated images unless The Journal deems individual cases permissible under one of the following criteria: 

  • The submission’s content focuses on AI and its applications; the inclusion of AI-generated images and/or videos is, therefore, necessary. All images and/or videos are properly cited, and the prompt(s) used to elicit them are disclosed.
  • All generated images/videos in the submission serve an explicitly-stated, reasonable purpose in communicating identifiable scientific datasets; all data is traceable, its accuracy is verifiable, and its communication as such complies with all applicable ethical, copyright, and usage guidelines. All such images/videos are properly cited.

This policy was adapted primarily from the Journal of the Medical Library Association and Springer Nature AI Policy.