Artificial Intelligence Use Policy

DiHA: Journal of Interdisciplinary Legal Studies (Disiplinlerarası Hukuk Araştırmaları Dergisi) supports the responsible, transparent, and human-supervised use of artificial intelligence (AI), generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), and AI-assisted technologies in academic research and publishing processes.

This policy sets out the fundamental principles governing the use of AI and AI-assisted technologies by authors, reviewers, and editors. Given the rapid development of these technologies and the evolving standards of academic publishing, the policy may be updated as necessary.

1. Fundamental Principles

The use of AI and AI-assisted technologies must comply with the principles of scientific integrity, academic originality, transparency, human oversight and accountability, confidentiality and data security, and respect for intellectual property rights. The use of AI tools does not relieve authors, reviewers, or editors of their scholarly and professional responsibilities. Because AI-generated content may be erroneous, incomplete, misleading, or biased, the outputs of these tools must be critically evaluated by humans.

2. Use of AI by Authors

Authors may use AI and AI-assisted technologies in the research and manuscript preparation process. Provided that human oversight and the authors' ultimate responsibility are maintained, these tools may be used for purposes such as assisting in organizing or synthesizing the literature, developing research questions and ideas, helping to identify research gaps, improving the organization of the text, improving language, expression, and readability, translation and language editing, and assisting with coding or technical tasks. However, AI tools cannot replace the authors' original scholarly contribution, academic judgment, or final evaluation. Information, data, interpretations, sources, and citations generated or suggested by AI must be independently verified by the authors. In particular, authors must verify whether the sources produced by AI tools actually exist and whether they support the claims made in the work.

3. Use of AI in the Research Process

If AI has been used in conducting the research beyond the writing of the manuscript, the nature of its use must be explained in the relevant section of the article. For example, where AI is used for data analysis, data classification, coding, modeling, content analysis, image generation, or as part of any other research method, the name of the tool used and, to the extent possible, its version, the purpose of its use, and its role in the research process must be explained in the Methods section. Where the use of AI may affect the research results, its possible effects on the reliability and interpretation of the results must also be assessed.

4. Disclosure of AI Use

If AI or AI-assisted technologies have been used in the preparation of the manuscript or in the research process, the nature of the use must be disclosed clearly and transparently. The disclosure should, as far as possible, include the name of the AI tool or service used, the purpose of its use, the stage at which it was used, the scope of its use, and, where necessary, the nature of human oversight and the verification process. The disclosure must be included in the Declarations section of the article; uses that form part of the research method must additionally be explained in the Methods section.

Sample declaration:

"During the preparation of this work, [tool/service name] was used for [purpose of use]. The outputs generated by AI were reviewed, verified, and corrected where necessary by the author(s). The author(s) bear full responsibility for the scholarly content, assessments, and final text of the article."

5. Listing AI as an Author

AI tools cannot be listed as authors or co-authors. Authorship belongs to natural persons who make an intellectual and scholarly contribution to the academic work, who can take responsibility for the work as a whole, and who can approve the final version of the article. The use of AI tools does not relieve the human authors of their authorship responsibility.

6. Confidentiality, Personal Data, and Intellectual Property

Authors, reviewers, and editors must not upload unpublished manuscripts, review reports, personal data, confidential research data, or copyright-protected content belonging to third parties that they have no right to share into AI systems whose security and confidentiality are not adequately ensured. The use of AI tools does not relieve anyone of their obligations regarding the protection of personal data, confidentiality, copyright, and other intellectual property rights.

7. Use of AI in the Peer Review Process

Reviewers must not upload all or any part of the manuscripts sent to them for evaluation into external AI tools in a manner that may violate the confidentiality or intellectual property rights of the authors. If reviewers use AI tools in preparing their review reports, they must protect the confidentiality of the manuscript and must not substitute AI output for their own scholarly assessment. The scholarly judgment and ultimate responsibility for the peer review evaluation rest with the reviewer.

8. Use of AI in the Editorial Process

Editors and editorial board members must not upload manuscripts submitted for evaluation, or any part of them, into AI tools in a manner that would result in unpublished and confidential content being shared with third-party AI systems. Editorial decisions must be based on a human assessment of the scholarly quality of the manuscript and its compliance with publication ethics. AI tools cannot be used in place of the editor's scholarly and editorial judgment.

9. Responsibility

Ultimate responsibility for any errors, omissions, false or fabricated sources, biased assessments, and copyright or confidentiality violations that may arise from the use of AI rests with the person who used the AI tool in the relevant process. Authors are responsible for the accuracy, originality, and academic integrity of the published article; reviewers for the accuracy and confidentiality of their evaluations; and editors for the integrity of the editorial process. DiHA regularly reviews its practices regarding the use of AI in line with international standards and developments in academic publishing.