1. General Principles and Policy Scope

This policy applies to submissions, revisions, editorial screening, peer review, publication preparation, and post-publication activities. It applies across all fields expressly recognized within the current ACSR Aims & Scope and both editorial sections: Article and Community Partnerships and Impacts.

1. Human accountability. Authors, reviewers, and editors remain responsible for their contributions, assessments, recommendations, and decisions.
2. Transparency. Substantive generative-AI assistance must be accurately disclosed as required by this policy.
3. Scholarly integrity. AI assistance must not produce fabricated evidence, false citations, misleading interpretations, unsupported impact claims, or plagiarized content.
4. Research and community-service ethics. AI use must respect consent, institutional approvals, community permissions, participant rights, confidentiality, and applicable data-protection requirements.
5. Independent peer review. AI-generated evaluations must not substitute for assessments by qualified independent human reviewers.
6. Editorial independence. Scientific evaluation and publication decisions remain under authorized human editorial responsibility.

AI-assisted technologies include generative language models, writing and coding assistants, automated content-generation tools, and systems capable of generating or materially transforming research or community-service content. Routine conventional software functions are distinguished from substantive generative-AI assistance.

2. AI Usage Policy for Authors

2.1. Authorship and Intellectual Responsibility

AI systems cannot qualify as authors or co-authors because they cannot accept responsibility, approve a final manuscript, disclose conflicts of interest, or respond to research-integrity concerns.

Human authors must make genuine intellectual contributions, approve the manuscript, and accept responsibility for accuracy, originality, conceptual grounding, methods, implementation records, evidence, interpretation, references, and conclusions. AI assistance does not replace authorship criteria or CRediT contributorship requirements.

2.2. Permitted Uses of AI

Authors may use AI-assisted technologies for the following purposes when verification, confidentiality, ethical, and disclosure requirements are satisfied:

1. Language editing. Improving grammar, spelling, clarity, sentence structure, and readability without changing substantive meaning or evidence.
2. Translation assistance. Translating author-prepared drafts into English, with independent verification of terminology, conceptual equivalence, methods, implementation descriptions, and arguments.
3. Technical and programming support. Preparing or debugging analytical, computational, statistical, or visualization scripts, with independent testing and validation.
4. Research or implementation methods. Using AI as a research instrument, analytical system, research object, or component of a community-service initiative where justified, appropriately authorized, transparently reported, and evaluated.
5. Explanatory graphics. Developing conceptual diagrams or clearly identified illustrative materials whose meaning is accurate and whose use complies with disclosure and intellectual-property requirements.

2.3. Prohibited Uses of AI

Authors must not use AI to:

1. Replace genuine independent intellectual work in developing the central argument, literature synthesis, interpretation, or conclusions.
2. Fabricate participants, questionnaire responses, interviews, attendance records, community feedback, analytical results, evaluation findings, or institutional documentation.
3. Generate fictitious community activities, partnerships, training sessions, interventions, beneficiary accounts, or impact evidence and present them as authentic records.
4. Manipulate photographs, tables, figures, charts, or analytical outputs to misrepresent actual activities or evidence.
5. Include fictitious or unverified publications, quotations, bibliographic details, DOI records, ethics approvals, or permission statements.
6. Upload identifiable participant information, confidential partner records, private interviews, or restricted institutional data to unauthorized or insecure services.
7. Present generated material as original human scholarship or authentic community evidence without sufficient intellectual work, verification, and required disclosure.

2.4. Verification of Evidence and References

Verify every factual claim, interpretation, calculation, quotation, citation, and reference introduced or modified through AI assistance. Bibliographic suggestions are not confirmed sources: consult the original publications and check relevance, authors, publication metadata, and DOI identifiers before citing them.

Follow APA 7th edition and reconcile citations with references in both directions. Validate analytical outputs against actual data and defensible procedures. Community-service claims must remain consistent with documented activities, measured outcomes, and the limitations of the evaluation.

2.5. Application to Both ACSR Editorial Sections

Article: Research Papers and Literature Review Papers use the Advances in Research Master Manuscript Template and standard scholarly review form. AI-supported methods do not create additional manuscript categories. Review authors must independently verify literature identification, selection, assessment, and synthesis; generated summaries do not replace engagement with original sources.

Community Partnerships and Impacts: Community Service Articles use the New ACSR Template Submission and dedicated 11-component review form. AI assistance must not substitute for actual implementation, community participation, program documentation, or evaluation. Distinguish implemented activities, observed outcomes, anticipated benefits, and demonstrated longer-term impacts.

Where AI forms part of legitimate research, review, implementation, or evaluation methods, document its role, relevant configuration, human oversight, validation, limitations, and reproducibility considerations. Both sections require manuscripts written in English.

3. AI Usage Policy for Editors

3.1. Human-Led Editorial Decision Making

Authorized human editors make scientific-editorial decisions. AI systems must not independently determine acceptance, rejection, revision requirements, or scholarly merit. Evaluation must address scope, section-specific requirements, integrity, methodological or implementation adequacy, evidence, and independent peer review.

3.2. Permitted Administrative Assistance

Where authorization, confidentiality, and oversight are assured, automated technologies may support:

1. Checks of formatting, required files, declarations, and administrative completeness.
2. Secure similarity screening and preliminary reference checks, subject to human examination.
3. Identification of potential subject or methodological expertise using appropriately accessible academic information.
4. Language improvement in routine correspondence and administrative communications.
5. Internal checklists and workflow organization without disclosure of protected information to unauthorized services.

3.3. Editorial Restrictions

Editors must not upload confidential manuscripts, unpublished data, participant information, reports, or correspondence to public or insecure AI services; delegate scientific assessment or publication decisions to AI; or treat generated criticisms, references, or recommendations as verified findings without independent assessment.

A submission must not be rejected solely because an AI detector reports a probability of generated content. External processing must not compromise participant privacy, community confidentiality, intellectual property, or review integrity.

3.4. Editorial Oversight

Automated indications of a potential problem require examination of supporting evidence and appropriate clarification. AI-detection scores and similarity percentages are screening indicators, not independent proof of misconduct. Eligible submissions proceed through double-anonymous review, normally involving at least two independent qualified human reviewers and the appropriate section-specific form.

4. AI Usage Policy for Peer Reviewers

4.1. Independent Expert Judgment

Each report must represent the reviewer's own critical assessment. Responsibility for evaluating scholarly contribution, methods, implementation, evidence, interpretation, and conclusions cannot be transferred to an AI system.

4.2. Permitted Limited Assistance

Limited assistance may improve grammar, spelling, clarity, or translation of comments independently written by the reviewer. It must not disclose confidential review content, unpublished findings, participant information, editorial correspondence, or identifiable submission material to an unauthorized platform. Proposed external processing of confidential content requires prior explicit editorial authorization and adequate safeguards.

4.3. Prohibited Reviewer Practices

1. Uploading manuscripts, abstracts, extracts, tables, figures, datasets, interviews, or community records to public or insecure services.
2. Requesting a complete AI-generated review or substituting generated comments for independent scholarly analysis.
3. Delegating methodological assessment, interpretation, community-impact evaluation, or publication recommendations without independent evaluation.
4. Submitting criticisms based on invented sources, unsupported arguments, or unexamined content.
5. Using privileged manuscript information for personal, professional, competitive, commercial, or unrelated research purposes.

4.4. Reporting Suspected AI Misuse

Report credible indications of fabricated sources, invented data or activities, manipulated findings, or undisclosed substantive misuse confidentially to the responsible editor. Provide specific evidence. Reviewers must not independently accuse authors, contact their employers or community partners, or treat detector outputs as definitive evidence.

5. Confidentiality, Data Security and Research Ethics

ACSR requires protection of participants, community partners, institutional records, unpublished manuscripts, restricted datasets, and confidential editorial materials. Particular care is needed for vulnerable participants, identifiable photographs, household information, health-related data, private interviews, beneficiary records, and sensitive community or organizational information.

1. Participant protection. Safeguard identifiable and sensitive information under applicable ethics, consent, and data-protection requirements.
2. Community and institutional confidentiality. Do not disclose restricted partner records, participant lists, internal documents, or evaluation data without appropriate authority.
3. External AI services. Public availability does not establish permission to upload protected information. Confidential editorial content requires explicit authorization and suitable safeguards before external processing.
4. Ethical compliance. Respect applicable approval, informed-consent, publication-consent, data-use, institutional, and community-partner permission requirements.
5. Incident reporting. Report suspected unauthorized disclosure or misuse promptly through appropriate editorial or institutional channels.

Where synthetic responses, simulated scenarios, or generated observations are legitimately studied, identify their artificial origin and explain the procedures. They must not be presented as genuine participant responses, completed community activities, or measured real-world impacts.

6. AI-Use Declaration

6.1. When Disclosure Is Required

Disclose substantive generative-AI assistance beyond routine spelling, grammar, formatting, or straightforward language correction. This includes substantial text restructuring, manuscript translation, analytical-code generation or debugging, AI-supported research or review procedures, and material assistance in community-service implementation or evaluation.

6.2. Where the Declaration Must Be Placed

This requirement does not introduce a third mandatory initial-submission file. The Blinded Manuscript and separate Title Page remain the two required documents.

6.3. Required Declaration Components

1. Tool identification: Name, developer, and model or version where identifiable; access date where relevant.
2. Purpose and scope: Activities, sections, procedures, or implementation components assisted, including the nature and extent of assistance.
3. Human verification: How authors examined, corrected, tested, or validated relevant outputs.
4. Human responsibility: Confirmation of responsibility for originality, integrity, accuracy, findings, and conclusions.

6.4. Declaration Examples

Adapt these examples to actual practices and replace all placeholders. Do not claim verification, approval, or procedures that did not occur. Disclosure does not authorize otherwise prohibited conduct.

7. Policy Violations, Investigation and Sanctions

7.1. Fair Investigation and Due Process

Suspected misuse is examined through an objective, evidence-based, proportionate process under the journal's publication-ethics procedures. AI-detection scores, automated classifications, and unsupported allegations alone are insufficient to establish misconduct.

The journal may examine manuscripts, original sources, research and implementation records, methods, declarations, and explanations. Concerned parties should receive a reasonable opportunity to respond before disciplinary action, with confidentiality and conflict-of-interest safeguards.

7.2. Possible Actions Concerning Authors

1. Minor disclosure deficiencies: Completion or correction of a declaration where assistance was permitted and the work remains reliable.
2. Material deficiencies: Substantive correction or rejection where verified misuse compromises originality, references, methods, implementation evidence, or reliability.
3. Serious misconduct: Retraction of affected published work and proportionate additional measures, including institutional notification or submission restrictions where justified by established fabrication, falsification, deliberate misrepresentation, or serious confidentiality violations.

7.3. Possible Actions Concerning Reviewers

A report lacking independent assessment or involving a serious confidentiality breach may be invalidated and excluded from decision-making. Depending on the evidence and severity, action may include a warning, termination of the assignment, or removal from the active reviewer pool.

7.4. Possible Actions Concerning Editors

Verified editorial misuse may result in reassignment, withdrawal of handling authority, corrective action, or review of appointment status. An editor must not determine the outcome of an investigation concerning their own conduct or another material conflict.

7.5. Post-Publication Actions

Concerns identified after publication may lead to author clarification, examination of supporting records, independent consultation, and an appropriate correction, Expression of Concern, or retraction. Notices must be transparent and linked to the original article. The Version of Record must not be silently changed to conceal material concerns.

8. Responsibilities and Implementation

This policy complements ACSR's authorship, publication-ethics, peer-review, plagiarism, confidentiality, research and community-service ethics, complaints, and post-publication policies. It applies alongside the distinct manuscript templates and review instruments of the two editorial sections.

Policy updates do not automatically invalidate historical manuscripts, completed editorial decisions, valid publications, or bibliographic records. Concerns about earlier work are examined on their merits through applicable integrity procedures. Legitimate changes and corrective actions must preserve transparency and traceability.