ISSN 0439-755X
CN 11-1911/B
CN 11-1911/B
This policy applies to all parties involved in the publication process of Acta Psychologica Sinica, including authors, reviewers, editorial board members, and editorial office staff; reviewers, editorial board members, and editorial office staff are prohibited from using AI (unless it is a locally deployed agent and the manuscript is not uploaded to any public platform). It is framed by five basic principles: authorship and contribution (generative AI must not be listed as an author); accountability (users bear full responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of AI-generated content); confidentiality and data protection (journal content and the confidentiality of research participants must not be compromised); avoidance of bias (potential bias in AI outputs must be assessed); and transparency and disclosure.
Boundaries for authors. The following uses are permitted and require no disclosure: improving language clarity (spelling and grammar correction) and formatting references according to the journal’s style (authors must verify accuracy themselves). The following uses are permitted but must be disclosed: substantive editing, rewriting, or restructuring of the text; translation of text; collecting, organizing, analyzing, or visualizing data; generating or optimizing code; and generating illustrative images (e.g., graphical abstracts). The following uses are strictly prohibited: using AI-generated content to falsely present data or results as human-originated; creating or tampering with factual or scientific images; fabricating or falsifying research data or evidence; and generating false citations or “hallucinated references.”
Disclosure requirements. Disclosure must be made in the cover letter and as a separate statement in the “Acknowledgments” section or before the references; if AI use is part of the research methods, it must also be described in the “Methods” section. Disclosure must include the tool name and version, a description of how it was used, and the authors’ role in reviewing and guiding AI-generated content; in complex cases, it is recommended to add the date(s) of use and the sections involved. Disclosure must be completed at initial submission and updated accordingly in revised manuscripts.
Consequences of violation. Failure to disclose generative AI use may be grounds for rejection; if substantive undisclosed use is discovered after publication, correction or retraction may be taken in accordance with COPE standards; for AI fabrication or falsification of images or data, the manuscript will be rejected before publication and the case recorded, or retracted after publication with notification to the authors’ institutions.