AI Use Policy
Purpose and Scope
This policy aims to:
- Establish a comprehensive governance framework for the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in scholarly publishing;
- Ensure academic integrity, transparency, accountability, and legal compliance;
- Be based on the standards of Scopus, COPE, and ICMJE;
- Comply with Vietnam's AI Law 2025, the Amended Intellectual Property Law 2025, and relevant regulations on personal data protection, cybersecurity, and electronic transactions.
This policy applies to authors, co-authors, reviewers, editors, the Editor-in-Chief, editorial staff, technical personnel, and AI service providers.
General Principles
- AI as a supporting tool: AI serves only as a supporting tool and is not a scholarly actor;
- Human responsibility: Final responsibility for all content and decisions always lies with humans;
- Mandatory transparency: Any use of AI that affects scholarly content must be disclosed clearly, accurately, and fully;
- Respect for rights and data: The use of AI must not infringe intellectual property rights, data rights, or privacy;
- No replacement of human judgment: AI shall not replace human scholarly, ethical, or legal judgment;
- Auditability and accountability: All uses of AI must be auditable, traceable, and accountable when required.
Policies for Authors
Permitted Uses of AI (with human oversight)
Authors are permitted to use AI for the following purposes, provided that human oversight and evaluation are maintained:
- Editing grammar, spelling, style and clarity;
- Academic translation;
- Assisting with content summarization and manuscript structure;
- Assisting in writing analytical code, provided that the authors understand, verify and take responsibility for it;
- Assisting in standardizing formatting, citations and metadata (subject to verification);
- Assisting with the technical editing of tables and figures (without distorting the original data).
Authors bear ultimate responsibility for the accuracy and reliability of the content.
Mandatory Disclosure Requirements
Authors are required to disclose the use of AI when:
- AI is used to generate content, produce summaries or rewrite sections;
- AI is used in data analysis, code generation or image creation;
- AI is used for language editing.
Prohibited Uses
Authors are NOT PERMITTED to:
- Create or fabricate research data, results or scientific evidence;
- Create fake scientific images or manipulate images in ways that distort the nature of the data;
- Generate references, DOI or citations that do not exist;
- Write an entire manuscript without substantive human intellectual contribution;
- Conceal or misrepresent the scope of AI use;
- List AI as an author or co-author;
- Violate intellectual property rights, data licenses or software licenses.
Policies for Reviewers
Reviewers should take note:
- Reviewers are not permitted to use AI to write the entire peer review report;
- Manuscripts, data or review comments must not be uploaded to public AI platforms;
- AI may only be used to assist with language and presentation and must not replace expert judgment;
- Violations may result in removal from the reviewer pool.
If AI is used to assist with summarization or language checking during the review process, reviewers must:
- Obtain approval from the Editorial Board;
- Not disclose any author-identifying information;
- Assume full responsibility for their evaluations and comments.
Policies for Editors
Editors must not use AI to replace human editorial decisions.
AI-assisted internal tools may be used to detect plagiarism, image manipulation or potential academic misconduct.
All manuscript data must be handled with strict confidentiality when using AI tools.
Data Privacy and Confidentiality
Authors, reviewers, and editors must comply with the following principles:
- Do not upload personal, sensitive or unpublished research data to third-party AI systems lacking adequate security;
- Do not submit internal documents, manuscripts or research materials to public AI tools;
- Comply with applicable data protection laws.
Handling Violations
The Journal reserves the right to apply the following measures in cases of abuse or non-transparent use of AI:
- Reject the manuscript or request revisions;
- Retract the article if it has already been published;
- Notify the author's affiliated institution or other relevant parties;
- Record the violation in the Journal's management system.
Authors have the right to submit complaints in accordance with the Journal's Complaints & Appeals Policy.
AI Use by the Journal
The Journal may use internal AI systems to:
- Assist in detecting plagiarism, abnormal citations or content generated by generative models;
- Detect image manipulation or academic misconduct.
The Journal commits not to using AI as a substitute for human peer review.
Policy Effectiveness and Updates
This policy takes effect upon issuance and may be updated periodically to align with advancements in AI technologies and international publishing standards.