Policy on the Use of Artificial Intelligence and Automated Tools

MENTOR Revista de Investigación Educativa y Deportiva establishes this policy to regulate the responsible, transparent, and ethical use of artificial intelligence, generative artificial intelligence, and other automated systems during research, manuscript preparation, peer review, and editorial management.

The use of such tools must remain under human oversight, judgment, and responsibility. No automated tool replaces the intellectual, scientific, or ethical responsibility of the individuals involved in the research and publication process.

General Principles

Artificial intelligence tools may be used where their use is relevant, transparent, ethically appropriate, and compatible with the research methodology and MENTOR’s editorial policies.

Authors are responsible for verifying the accuracy, validity, originality, and integrity of all content produced, modified, analyzed, or supported through artificial intelligence tools.

Outputs generated by these technologies may contain inaccurate, incomplete, biased, outdated, unverifiable, or fabricated information. All outputs used must therefore be reviewed and validated by the individuals responsible for the work.

Authorship and Responsibility

Artificial intelligence tools, language models, chatbots, and other automated systems cannot be listed as authors or co-authors of a manuscript.

Authorship requires intellectual contribution and the capacity to assume responsibility for the accuracy, integrity, and content of the work, responsibilities that can only be assumed by individuals.

Authors remain fully responsible for any content obtained or modified through artificial intelligence tools.

Use of Artificial Intelligence in Manuscript Preparation

Generative artificial intelligence may be used as a supporting tool during manuscript preparation, provided that it does not replace the intellectual contribution of the authors.

Substantive uses, such as significant text generation or rephrasing, argumentative restructuring, preparation of summaries, generation or substantial modification of content, AI-assisted translation of relevant portions of the manuscript, or comparable interventions, must be disclosed.

A specific disclosure is not required when conventional tools are used solely for spelling, grammar, typography, formatting, reference management, or other technical functions that do not generate substantive intellectual content.

Where a generative tool makes changes that go beyond straightforward language correction, its use must be disclosed.

Use of Artificial Intelligence in Research

Where an artificial intelligence tool forms part of the design or conduct of the research, its use must be described in the Methods section with sufficient detail to allow readers to understand and assess the procedure used.

This may include, where applicable, the use of artificial intelligence for data analysis, classification, coding, language processing, synthetic data generation, automated information extraction, image analysis, or other methodological activities.

Authors must identify the tool or system used, its purpose, the main methodological decisions associated with its use, and the measures taken to verify its outputs where such information is relevant to the transparency and reproducibility of the study.

Use of an artificial intelligence tool does not exempt researchers from justifying their methodology, validating the results, or assuming responsibility for the conclusions reached.

Confidential Data and Information Protection

Authors must not enter confidential information, personal or sensitive data, third-party manuscripts, information protected by institutional agreements, or materials whose use has not been authorized into public artificial intelligence tools.

Where artificial intelligence tools are used to process information derived from human participants, applicable requirements concerning ethics, consent, confidentiality, and data protection must be respected.

Use of a technological tool does not alter ethical or legal obligations relating to research data.

Disclosure of Artificial Intelligence Use

Where generative artificial intelligence has been substantively used during manuscript preparation, authors must include a specific statement before the References section.

The heading must be:

Declaration on the Use of Artificial Intelligence and AI-Assisted Technologies

The statement must identify the tool used, state the purpose of its use, and provide sufficient information about how it contributed to preparation of the work.

The following wording may be used as a model:

“During the preparation of this manuscript, the authors used [name of tool/platform] for [describe purpose]. After using this tool, the authors reviewed, verified, and edited the resulting content and accept full responsibility for the final content of the manuscript.”

Where an artificial intelligence tool forms part of the research methodology, its methodological description must not be replaced solely by this disclosure statement.

Prompts and Reproducibility

Where prompts, instructions, or configurations used with an artificial intelligence tool are relevant to understanding or reproducing a scientific procedure, they must be described in the Methods section or included as supplementary material where appropriate.

MENTOR does not require publication of all prompts used for language correction or auxiliary tasks with no methodological relevance.

This distinction allows scientifically relevant uses to be documented without imposing unnecessary requirements for minor technical operations.

Artificial Intelligence as a Source of Information

Generative artificial intelligence must not be cited as a source of scientific evidence or used as a substitute for verifiable scholarly literature.

Scientific claims must be supported by original, verifiable, and appropriate sources.

Where an artificial intelligence tool is the object of study or forms part of the methodology, it may be identified as a tool or technology used, but its responses must not be presented as independent scientific evidence.

References and AI-Generated Content

Authors must personally verify all references, DOIs, data, quotations, claims, and other information obtained with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools.

The inclusion of nonexistent references, false DOIs, fabricated quotations, invented information, or unverified content remains the responsibility of the authors and may be addressed under MENTOR’s research integrity policies.

AI-Generated Images, Figures, and Other Content

Where artificial intelligence is used to generate or substantially modify images, figures, illustrations, or other materials included in an article, such use must be disclosed.

Artificial intelligence must not be used to fabricate, improperly alter, or misleadingly present research data, results, scientific images, or evidence.

Authors must ensure that they have the necessary rights and permissions to publish the relevant material and that its use complies with applicable law and MENTOR’s policies.

Use of Artificial Intelligence by Reviewers

Submitted manuscripts are confidential documents.

Reviewers must not upload manuscripts, excerpts, supplementary files, data, or other unpublished information to public generative artificial intelligence tools.

Reviewers must not use generative artificial intelligence to produce all or a substantial part of their review reports.

The review must reflect the reviewer’s own analysis, judgment, and intellectual responsibility.

Conventional spelling or grammar tools may be used provided that they do not compromise manuscript confidentiality or generate substantive evaluation in place of the reviewer.

Use of Artificial Intelligence by Editors

Editors must not upload manuscripts, review reports, personal data, or confidential editorial information to public generative artificial intelligence tools.

Generative artificial intelligence must not be used to produce editorial decisions, replace scientific assessment by reviewers, or substitute for the judgment of the responsible editor.

Decisions to accept, revise, or reject manuscripts must remain under human responsibility.

Automated Tools Used by MENTOR

MENTOR may use automated tools to support the editorial process where appropriate and where the tools have been selected for a clearly defined purpose.

MENTOR currently uses Turnitin as a supporting tool for textual similarity screening before external peer review.

Outputs generated by automated tools do not automatically determine plagiarism, misconduct, acceptance, or rejection of a manuscript.

Any automated detection of potential integrity concerns will be reviewed by a member of the editorial team before a decision is made, in accordance with MENTOR’s Similarity and Plagiarism Detection Policy.

Human Oversight

All use of automated systems within the editorial process must remain subject to human oversight.

Automated tools may support specific tasks but do not replace the responsibilities of authors, reviewers, or editors.

Final scientific and editorial decisions will always remain the responsibility of individuals.

Non-Compliance with this Policy

Undisclosed use of artificial intelligence where disclosure is required, fabrication of data or references, misleading manipulation of content, breaches of confidentiality, or other practices that compromise manuscript integrity may result in requests for clarification or correction, manuscript rejection, or post-publication action where the article has already been published.

Actions will be taken in accordance with MENTOR’s Editorial Ethics and Research Integrity Policy, Similarity and Plagiarism Detection Policy, and Corrections, Retractions, and Post-Publication Updates Policy and, where appropriate, with reference to COPE guidance.