Assistive and Generative AI Guidelines for Authors 

Sage recognizes the transformative potential of AI-powered writing assistants and tools such as ChatGPT. These technologies can support the writing and research process by providing authors with fresh ideas, alleviating writer's block, and optimizing editing tasks. While these tools can offer enhanced efficiency, it's also important to understand their limitations and to use them in ways which adhere to principles of academic and scientific integrity. As a publisher, Sage supports and believes in the value of human creativity and human authorship. Large Language Models (LLMs) cannot be listed as an author of a work, nor take responsibility for the text they generate. As such, human oversight, intervention and accountability is essential to ensure the accuracy and integrity of the content we publish.  

We acknowledge that many academics and scholars are already using assistive and generative tools to enhance their productivity and assist in their academic writing. We have developed these guidelines to support authors submitting articles for Sage Journals, publishing books with Sage or Corwin, or working with us to create content for our Learning Resources products. 

The distinction between Assistive AI tools and Generative AI tools 

For the purposes of these guidelines, we distinguish between Assistive AI tools and Generative AI tools as follows: 

Disclosure 

We believe that AI-assisted writing will become more common as AI tools are increasingly embedded within tools such as Microsoft Word and Google Docs. You are not required to disclose the use of assistive AI tools in your submission, but all content, including AI-assisted content, must undergo rigorous human review prior to submission. This is to ensure the content aligns with our standards for quality and authenticity.

You are required to inform us of any AI-generated content appearing in your work (including text, images, or translations) when you submit any form of content to Sage or Corwin, including journal articles, manuscripts and book proposals. This will allow the editorial team to make an informed publishing decision regarding your submission.

Where we identify published articles or content with undisclosed use of generative AI tools for content generation, we will take appropriate corrective action.

Things to consider before using Generative AI tools

If you do decide to use AI to generate content or images in your submission, you must follow these guidelines prior to submitting your work to Sage or Corwin. 

• Disclosure: As outlined above you must clearly reveal any AI-generated content within your submission. Detail where the AI-generated content appears, using the disclosure template found at the end of these guidelines and provide this disclosure along with your submission.  

• Carefully verify the accuracy, validity, and appropriateness of AI-generated content or AI-produced citations: Large Language Models (LLMs) can sometimes "hallucinate" – producing incorrect or misleading information, especially when used outside of the domain of their training data or when dealing with complex or ambiguous topics. While their outputs may appear linguistically sound, they might not be scientifically accurate or correct and LLMs may produce nonexistent citations. Remember, some LLMs might only have been trained on data up to a specific year, potentially resulting in incorrect or incomplete knowledge of a topic.  

• Carefully check sources & citations: Offer a comprehensive list of resources utilized for content and citations, including those produced by AI. Meticulously cross-check citations for their accuracy to ensure proper referencing. 

• Appropriately cite AI-generated content: Where you are including content generated by AI, appropriate citation should be included following the appropriate referencing convention. (For example, in Harvard style ChatGPT. 2023. San Francisco: OpenAI. ChatGPT: Microsoft Windows). 

• Avoid plagiarism and copyright infringement: LLMs could inadvertently reproduce significant text chunks from existing sources without due citation, infringing others' intellectual property. As the work's author, you bear responsibility for confirming that there is no plagiarized content in your submission. 

• Be aware of bias: Because LLMs have been trained on text that includes biases, and because there is inherent bias in AI tools because of human programming, AI-generated text may reproduce these biases, such as racism or sexism, or may overlook perspectives of populations that have been historically marginalized. Relying on LLMs to generate text or images can inadvertently propagate these biases so you should carefully review all AI-generated content to ensure it’s inclusive, impartial, and appeals to a broad readership. 

• Acknowledge limitations: In your submission, if you have included AI-generated content, you should appropriately acknowledge the constraints of LLMs, including the potential for bias, inaccuracies, and knowledge gaps. 

• Take responsibility: AI tools like ChatGPT cannot be recognized as a co-author in your submission. As the author, you (and any co-authors) are entirely responsible for the work you submit.  

• Check for specific guidelines: If you are submitting an article to a Sage Journal, check the submission guidelines of your targeted journal, ensuring compliance with any AI-related policies they might have in place, as they may differ from these guidelines. 

• Stay updated: Follow the latest developments in the debates around AI-generated content to ensure you understand the possible ramifications and ethical challenges of using AI-generated content in your submission. 

Prohibited use 

• Do not use generative AI to artificially create or modify core research data.

• Never share any sensitive personal or proprietary information on an AI platform like ChatGPT as this may expose sensitive information or intellectual property to others. Any information that you share with AI tools like ChatGPT is collected for business purposes.

• Editors and Reviewers must uphold the confidentiality of the peer review process. Editors must not share information about submitted manuscripts or peer review reports in generative AI tools such a ChatGPT. Reviewers must not use AI tools, including but not limited to ChatGPT, to generate review reports.

Further information

• World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) recommendations on chat bots, ChatGPT and scholarly manuscripts.

• Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)’s position statement on Authorship and AI tools.

• STM Whitepaper on Generative AI in Scholarly Communication.

If you have questions on these guidelines or would like to discuss how you plan to use AI in your writing, please reach out to your Sage or Corwin editor or contact.  

Template for disclosure of the use of Generative AI tools in your submission  

Full title of your submission: 

Type of submission (e.g., research article, book chapter): 

Name of the Generative AI tool used: 

Brief description of how the tool was used in your writing process: 

Your full name:

Your primary contact at Sage or Corwin:

The name of the Generative AI Tool(s) used in your submission:

(https://www.software.ac.uk/publication/how-cite-and-describe-software) 

Rationale for AI use:

Explain your reasoning for using AI and the tool(s) you selected. How it was used? What did you use AI to do? 

Final prompt given:

Final response generated:

Please include all of the prompts & responses used in your submission and indicate where in your submission the AI generated content appears.