Artificial Intelligence Policy

Artificial Intelligence Policy

SOCIOVENT — Journal of Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship

SOCIOVENT publishes sociological accounts of social innovation and enterprise — work that stands or falls on the judgment, fieldwork, and interpretive labour of the people who wrote it. Artificial intelligence tools have a place in that process, but only as instruments in a human researcher's hands, never as a substitute for the thinking itself. This policy sets out how AI may — and may not — be used by authors, reviewers, and editors engaging with the journal.

1. AI Does Not Author, and Cannot Be Credited

No AI system — a large language model, chatbot, image generator, or similar tool — may be listed as an author or co-author on any SOCIOVENT submission. Authorship carries intellectual accountability: the capacity to stand behind a claim, defend an interpretation, and answer for an error. AI tools cannot bear that responsibility, so they cannot hold that credit.

2. Disclosure Is Not Optional

Any use of AI in preparing a manuscript must be disclosed in full, regardless of how minor it may seem. This covers, among other uses:

●      Brainstorming, structuring an argument, or searching the literature

●      Drafting assistance, paraphrasing, or language editing

●      Data analysis, coding, or visualization

●      Producing images, figures, or other graphical material

Authors must add a short "AI Assistance Declaration" (in the Acknowledgments or as its own section) naming the tool used, its purpose, and how extensively it was applied. Responsibility for the manuscript's content — accuracy, originality, and integrity — rests entirely with the human author(s), whatever assistance was used along the way.

3. Reviewers Keep Manuscripts Out of AI Systems

Confidentiality is non-negotiable during peer review. Reviewers must never paste, upload, or otherwise feed any part of a manuscript under review into an AI tool for summarizing, analysis, or drafting a report — doing so breaches the confidentiality every author is owed and is treated as a serious ethical violation. Reviewers remain free to use AI for tasks that touch none of the manuscript's content, such as polishing the language of their own already-written report.

4. Editors: AI for Logistics, Not for Judgment

Editors may lean on AI for administrative work — formatting checks, correspondence drafting, and similar tasks — as long as manuscript content stays out of any external AI system. Every editorial decision on a submission's fate must rest on human judgment, informed by the reviewers' expert assessment, never delegated to an algorithm.

5. Where the Line Sits

The following are treated as violations of this policy:

●      A manuscript whose central argument or analysis is substantially AI-generated, without genuine human intellectual direction

●      Using AI to invent data, citations, or sources that don't exist

●      Leaving AI assistance undisclosed

●      Exposing manuscript content to AI tools during review

6. How SOCIOVENT Responds

A manuscript found to violate this policy faces rejection, or retraction if it has already been published. Undisclosed or unethical AI use may bring further consequences, including notice to the authors' home institution and a bar on future submissions to the journal.

A Closing Note

Tools change; the standard behind them does not. SOCIOVENT will revisit this policy as AI and scholarly norms continue to evolve, but the principle guiding it stays fixed: the intellectual work, the oversight, and the accountability for what gets published belong to people, not to the tools they use.