The Editorial Board of the “Ukrainian Journal of Constitutional Law” recognizes the rapid integration of Generative Artificial Intelligence (Generative AI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) into scholarly communication. To maintain academic integrity, transparency, and copyright protections, the Journal adheres to the standards established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), ICSTI, and major indexing databases (Scopus, Web of Science). This Policy sets clear boundaries for authors, reviewers, and editors regarding AI usage.
1. Prohibition of AI Authorship
Artificial intelligence tools, generative language models, or chatbots (such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, etc.) cannot be listed as an author or co-author of any paper published in the Journal.
Rationale: Authorship carries legal, ethical, and academic accountability for the integrity of the work, guarantee of originality, resolution of conflicts of interest, and signing of publishing agreements. AI tools lack legal personhood, cannot assume accountability, and cannot hold copyright.
2. Acceptable and Unacceptable AI Uses for Authors
A) Permissible Uses (No formal disclosure required):
- Spelling, grammar, and stylistic editing (e.g., automated grammar checkers like Grammarly);
- Assisting in translating short passages or terminology, provided the author thoroughly verifies the final text;
- Formatting bibliographic references in accordance with MLA 9th edition guidelines.
B) Permissible Uses (MANDATORY disclosure required):
- Employing AI tools for preliminary data extraction, grouping, or coding of large statutory or legal datasets;
- Utilizing AI assistance to draft code or scripts for data analysis, where such tools form part of the research methodology.
C) Strictly Prohibited Uses:
- Generating the substantive narrative, core arguments, legal interpretations, or conclusions of the manuscript using AI;
- Fabricating or generating legal citations, statutory sources, court judgments, or statistical datasets;
- Creating or manipulating figures, charts, or images in a manner that distorts primary empirical evidence.
3. AI Disclosure Statement Requirements
If authors utilize generative AI tools during the conceptualization, drafting, or data analysis phases of their manuscript, they must include an explicit AI Usage Disclosure section immediately preceding the References/Bibliography list.
Disclosure Template:
“During the preparation of this manuscript, the author(s) utilized [Tool Name / Version, e.g., ChatGPT v4.0] to [specify purpose, e.g., assist with language editing of the English abstract]. The author(s) subsequently reviewed, verified, and edited the output, assumes full responsibility for the accuracy of the published content, and confirms that all conclusions remain entirely their own.”
If no AI tools were used during manuscript preparation, no statement is required.
4. Strict Prohibition of AI in Peer Review
Reviewers are strictly prohibited from uploading submitted manuscripts, abstracts, or any portion thereof into public or private AI platforms (such as ChatGPT, Claude, DeepL, etc.) for review generation, summarization, or translation.
Rationale: Inputting confidential manuscript data into external AI systems constitutes a direct breach of peer-review confidentiality, author copyright, and double-blind protocol. AI systems may store uploaded content on external servers to train future models, risking intellectual property leakage.
5. Ethical Constraints for Editors
Members of the Editorial Board and the Editor-in-Chief do not rely on AI tools to make final editorial decisions regarding manuscript acceptance or rejection. Automated software is limited strictly to technical processing (e.g., specialized plagiarism detection software).
6. Author Accountability for AI-Generated Content
Authors remain solely responsible for the originality, veracity, and accuracy of their work. Excuses asserting that errors, unverified claims, or fabricated citations (AI hallucinations) resulted from automated software performance **will not be accepted by the Editorial Office** and will be treated as breaches of academic integrity, leading to manuscript rejection or article retraction.