Journal of Nursing in Infection Prevention and Control (JNIPC) recognizes that generative artificial intelligence and AI-assisted technologies may support certain aspects of research and manuscript preparation.

Their use must be transparent, responsible, lawful, and consistent with the principles of research integrity, confidentiality, data protection, intellectual property, scientific accuracy, and human accountability.

Artificial intelligence must not replace human scientific judgment, authorship responsibility, peer-review expertise, or editorial decision-making.

Scope of this Policy

This policy applies to authors, reviewers, Editors, members of the Editorial Board, editorial staff, and other individuals involved in the submission, evaluation, production, or publication of content in JNIPC.

It applies to generative artificial intelligence systems, large language models, chatbots, automated writing and translation systems, image-generation tools, AI-assisted data-analysis applications, and other technologies capable of generating or substantially modifying intellectual or scientific content.

Authorship

Artificial intelligence systems, language models, chatbots, and other AI-assisted technologies cannot be listed as authors, co-authors, or contributors with authorship responsibility.

Authorship requires responsibilities that can be fulfilled only by human individuals, including:

• making an identifiable intellectual contribution to the work;
• approving the final version of the manuscript;
• accepting responsibility for the accuracy, originality, and integrity of the work;
• declaring conflicts of interest and sources of funding;
• responding to questions concerning the methods, data, analyses, conclusions, or ethical conduct of the research;
• cooperating in the investigation and correction of possible errors or misconduct.

The human authors remain fully and collectively accountable for all content submitted to and published by JNIPC.

Use by Authors

Authors remain fully responsible for the originality, accuracy, validity, integrity, legality, and reliability of all submitted content, including content generated, translated, summarized, revised, analysed, or otherwise supported by artificial intelligence.

Authors must independently review and verify all AI-assisted outputs before submission. This responsibility includes:

• factual statements;
• scientific interpretations;
• statistical analyses;
• computer code;
• translations;
• references and bibliographic information;
• tables, figures, and supplementary materials;
• clinical and infection-prevention recommendations;
• descriptions of ethical approval, consent, funding, and conflicts of interest.

Generative artificial intelligence must not be used to fabricate, falsify, alter, obscure, or misrepresent:

• research data or results;
• participants, samples, or study settings;
• statistical outputs;
• citations or bibliographic sources;
• images, figures, laboratory findings, or clinical documentation;
• ethical approvals or institutional authorizations;
• informed-consent procedures;
• conflicts-of-interest or funding declarations;
• any other element of the scientific record.

References generated or suggested by an AI system must not be included unless the authors have verified their existence, accuracy, relevance, authorship, publication details, DOI, and consistency with the claim being supported.

Disclosure of AI Use

The use of generative artificial intelligence or AI-assisted technologies must be disclosed when such technologies have contributed substantively to the intellectual, scientific, analytical, or linguistic content of the manuscript.

Disclosure is required when AI has been used to:

• generate or substantially revise manuscript text;
• translate substantial sections of the manuscript;
• summarize or synthesize scientific literature;
• conduct or support data analysis or interpretation;
• generate statistical code or other analytic code;
• create or substantially modify tables, figures, images, or graphical materials;
• support evidence synthesis, classification, prediction, or modelling;
• perform another substantive activity affecting the research or its reporting.

The disclosure must identify:

• the name of the tool;
• the version or model, where known;
• the provider or developer;
• the purpose for which the tool was used;
• the parts of the manuscript or research process affected;
• the steps taken by the authors to review and verify the output.

The disclosure should be included in the Methods section when AI forms part of the research methodology. When AI has been used only during manuscript preparation, the disclosure should appear in a dedicated statement before the References.

A suitable disclosure statement is:

During the preparation of this manuscript, the authors used [name, version, and provider of the tool] for [purpose]. The tool was used in relation to [parts of the manuscript or research process]. The authors independently reviewed and verified all generated or modified content and accept full responsibility for the accuracy, integrity, and final version of the manuscript.

Disclosure of AI use does not transfer responsibility from the authors to the tool, provider, Journal, Editor, reviewer, or Publisher.

Tools that Do Not Normally Require Disclosure

The use of conventional tools that perform limited technical functions without generating or substantially modifying intellectual or scientific content does not normally require disclosure.

Examples may include:

• basic spelling correction;
• basic grammar checking;
• reference-management software;
• document formatting tools;
• standard word-processing functions;
• routine plagiarism or similarity checking performed by the Journal;
• technical file-conversion or accessibility tools.

Disclosure is nevertheless required when a tool goes beyond routine correction and substantially rewrites, generates, interprets, or modifies intellectual content.

Translation and Language Editing

Authors may use AI-assisted tools to support translation or language editing, but the final manuscript must accurately represent the authors’ intended scientific meaning.

Substantive AI-assisted translation or rewriting must be disclosed. Routine correction of spelling, punctuation, or grammar that does not materially alter the content does not normally require disclosure.

Authors must verify that AI-assisted translation has not altered:

• clinical or scientific terminology;
• the meaning of study findings;
• descriptions of infection-prevention procedures;
• statistical information;
• ethical statements;
• the strength or certainty of conclusions and recommendations.

Authors remain responsible for the quality of the English-language manuscript.

AI as Part of the Research Methodology

When artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural-language processing, or another computational model forms part of the research methodology, its use must be described transparently and in sufficient detail to permit scientific evaluation and, where reasonably possible, reproducibility.

The Methods section should report, as applicable:

• the name and purpose of the tool or model;
• the developer or provider;
• the model and version used;
• the date or period of access;
• the input data and data-preparation procedures;
• the prompts, instructions, or principal parameters used;
• the training or validation dataset, where relevant and available;
• the validation and performance-assessment procedures;
• human oversight and verification procedures;
• known limitations, uncertainties, and potential biases;
• data-protection, confidentiality, and ethical safeguards.

Proprietary restrictions do not remove the authors’ responsibility to provide enough methodological information for readers and reviewers to understand and evaluate the use of the technology.

Images, Figures, and Visual Materials

Artificial intelligence must not be used to create or modify scientific images, figures, photographs, laboratory results, clinical images, microscopy images, charts, or other visual materials in a manner that misrepresents the original data or affects their interpretation.

AI-assisted image processing must not:

• introduce features that were not present in the original data;
• remove scientifically relevant information;
• obscure abnormalities, artefacts, or inconsistencies;
• combine images without transparent identification;
• alter clinical, microbiological, epidemiological, or laboratory findings;
• create a misleading representation of research results.

Any permitted use of AI-assisted image processing must be disclosed in the Methods section and in the corresponding figure legend.

Authors may be required to provide the original, unprocessed image files and a complete description of all processing steps.

AI-generated illustrative or conceptual images must be clearly identified as such and must not be presented as original research data, clinical documentation, or evidence of a scientific finding.

Data, Statistical Analysis, and Computer Code

Authors may use AI-assisted technologies to support data analysis or code generation only when the methods are scientifically appropriate, transparently reported, and independently verified.

Authors must verify all generated code, calculations, outputs, assumptions, and interpretations. The use of AI does not remove the need for appropriate statistical, methodological, clinical, or subject-specific expertise.

AI-assisted tools must not be used to:

• invent or interpolate undocumented data;
• replace missing data without a scientifically justified and reported method;
• selectively exclude results;
• perform undisclosed transformations;
• generate unsupported conclusions;
• conceal analytical uncertainty or model limitations.

Where possible, authors should preserve the prompts, code, parameters, input data, version information, and output necessary to document the analytical process.

Confidentiality, Privacy, and Personal Data

Authors must not upload confidential or restricted information to an external artificial-intelligence system unless appropriate safeguards, permissions, contractual protections, and data-processing arrangements are in place.

Restricted information includes:

• directly or indirectly identifiable patient or participant data;
• health and genetic data;
• confidential institutional information;
• unpublished third-party manuscripts or research data;
• protected peer-review or editorial correspondence;
• commercially confidential material;
• copyrighted material not authorized for external processing;
• information subject to professional secrecy or contractual restrictions.

Removing direct identifiers may not be sufficient when individuals could still be identified through clinical details, rare conditions, dates, institutional information, images, or combinations of variables.

Authors remain responsible for ensuring compliance with applicable data-protection law, ethical approvals, informed-consent conditions, institutional policies, and contractual obligations.

Intellectual Property and Third-Party Rights

Authors must ensure that AI-assisted content does not infringe copyright, database rights, confidentiality obligations, licences, trademarks, privacy, or other intellectual-property and legal rights.

The use of an AI system does not guarantee that its output is original or legally reusable. Authors must independently assess whether generated text, images, code, or other material reproduces or derives inappropriately from protected third-party content.

Any required permissions, licences, citations, or acknowledgements must be obtained and provided before publication.

Use by Reviewers

Manuscripts submitted to JNIPC are confidential documents.

Reviewers must not upload manuscripts, abstracts, supplementary files, figures, tables, datasets, peer-review reports, editorial correspondence, or unpublished information to public or external generative artificial-intelligence systems.

Reviewers must not use generative artificial intelligence to:

• evaluate the scientific quality of a manuscript;
• summarize the manuscript for review purposes;
• identify strengths or weaknesses;
• generate reviewer comments;
• draft, rewrite, translate, or substantively edit the review report;
• formulate the final recommendation.

The review report must represent the reviewer’s own independent expertise, intellectual work, and professional judgment.

Reviewers remain fully responsible for the accuracy, fairness, confidentiality, originality, and content of their evaluation.

Limited use of conventional spelling or grammar tools may be acceptable only where manuscript content and confidential information are not transmitted to an external system and the tool does not generate or substantially modify the review.

Use by Editors and Editorial Staff

Editors and editorial staff must preserve the confidentiality of manuscripts, peer-review reports, author information, reviewer identities, editorial correspondence, unpublished data, and internal editorial records.

Confidential materials must not be uploaded to public or external generative artificial-intelligence systems.

Editors must not use generative artificial intelligence to:

• replace independent editorial assessment;
• evaluate the scientific validity of a manuscript;
• select or rank manuscripts automatically;
• determine whether a manuscript should be accepted or rejected;
• generate an editorial decision without substantive human assessment;
• replace the evaluation provided by qualified reviewers.

Similarity-detection software, technical validation systems, metadata tools, and administrative workflow functions may support the editorial process, but their outputs must be interpreted by authorized human Editors or editorial staff.

Responsibility for every editorial decision remains with the Editor-in-Chief or the designated human Editor acting without a relevant conflict of interest.

Editorial Assessment of Disclosed AI Use

Disclosure of AI use does not automatically result in rejection. The Editors will consider:

• whether the use was appropriate for the stated purpose;
• whether it was reported transparently;
• whether the authors maintained adequate human oversight;
• whether the output was independently verified;
• whether confidentiality and data-protection requirements were respected;
• whether the use affects originality, reliability, reproducibility, or interpretation;
• whether third-party rights were respected;
• whether the manuscript remains scientifically and ethically sound.

The Editors may request additional information, prompts, outputs, original files, code, data, validation documentation, or other materials necessary to evaluate the use of artificial intelligence.

Undisclosed or Inappropriate Use

Suspected undisclosed, misleading, unsafe, unethical, or inappropriate use of artificial intelligence will be evaluated under the Journal’s Research and Publication Misconduct Policy and applicable principles of publication ethics.

Depending on the circumstances, JNIPC may:

• request clarification or additional documentation;
• require correction or disclosure of AI use;
• request original data, images, code, or source files;
• suspend editorial evaluation;
• reject the manuscript;
• withdraw an acceptance decision;
• publish a correction;
• publish an expression of concern;
• retract a published article;
• notify the authors’ institution, ethics committee, funder, or another competent body.

Actions will take account of the nature and seriousness of the issue, its effect on the reliability of the work, the authors’ transparency and cooperation, and the need to preserve the integrity of the scholarly record.

Policy Updates

Artificial-intelligence technologies and related ethical, legal, and editorial standards continue to evolve. JNIPC may update this policy when necessary to reflect changes in technology, publication practice, data protection, research integrity, or applicable law.

The version applicable to a submission is the policy published on the Journal website at the relevant stage of the editorial process.

Policy last updated: 28 July 2026.