Artificial Intelligence Policy
Artificial Intelligence Policy
Journal of Spatial Research supports the conduct and presentation of scientific research with up-to-date tools and techniques but prioritises the principles of scientific research and publication ethics in the use of innovations. Although the text and image generation potential of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) tools create great opportunities and conveniences for researchers, there are potential ethical problems and risks in the use of these rapidly developing tools.
The main situations that may cause some possible ethical problems (plagiarism, data fabrication, data forgery, data falsification, violation of confidentiality and privacy, etc.) that may be encountered in the use of GAI in scientific research and publications are as follows:
1. Failure to declare in the research that GAI was used in content production,
2. Unauthorised use of content produced by someone else,
3. Inappropriate citation of existing information in the literature without attribution,
4. The production of inaccurate or misleading data by the GAI and the use of this data by the researcher,
5. The introduction of data and results produced by unrepeatable and unexplained research methods into the academic literature,
6. Deepening discrimination of vulnerable groups due to biased and limited data,
7. Collection, storage, transfer, use and reuse of personal data in violation of the legislation.
Being the author of a scientific article, peer reviewing and editorial processes involve responsibilities that can only be attributed to humans. As non-legal entities, AI tools cannot assert the existence or non-existence of conflicts of interest or manage copyright and licensing agreements, according to the Committee of Publication Ethics-COPE notice. Generative artificial intelligence or AI-supported technologies do not have the ethical values and human-specific competences to undertake these responsibilities. We have endeavoured to develop a journal policy to ensure that AI systems, which have great potential in education and research, can be used in accordance with ethical principles and scientific responsibility. Our GAI policy is presented to the attention of editors, authors and reviewers.
For Editors:
Editors should not upload an article, or any part of an article submitted to the journal to the GAI tool, considering that the privacy and ownership rights of the authors may be violated. In addition, in cases where the article contains personally identifiable information, GAI tools should not be used at any stage of the editorial processes, including language and writing processes, in order to protect data confidentiality.
The editor responsible for the processes is expected to inform the journal management if he/she thinks that the author or reviewer for an article violates the journal's AI policy. Editors should carefully review the authors' AI usage statements and request additional clarification if necessary. Articles that are thought to use AI beyond the permitted areas are investigated editorially, additional explanations and evidentiary documents may be requested from the authors. If deemed necessary, the relevant study may be rejected. Cases requiring further evaluation should be forwarded to the editorial board of the journal.
For Reviewers:
When a researcher is invited to review another researcher's article as a reviewer, the article should be treated as a confidential document. The whole or part of the manuscript that is under review and/or not yet published should not be uploaded to GAI, considering that it may pose a significant threat to confidentiality and ownership rights. In addition, peer review reports should not be uploaded to an artificial intelligence tool, even if it is for the purpose of improving grammar and readability. GAI tool should not be used at any stage of the evaluation process. The reviewer is expected to inform the editor in charge of the manuscript if he/she believes, based on objective findings, that the manuscript has used GAI outside the permitted fields in the manuscript submitted for evaluation.
For Authors:
The author(s) should ensure that the articles they submit to the journal are original and scientific in quality. All manuscripts submitted to the journal should consist of original research and findings of the author(s).
The use of GAI in scientific studies may involve ethical issues such as authorship, copyright and plagiarism. Part or all of an article cannot be produced in GAI. Administrative and legal sanctions arising from non-compliance with the principles of citation, even anonymous information, should not be ignored.
It is not allowed to use any kind of material generated by AI, such as audio, text, visual, and video, that may cause copyright and personality rights violations in the article or its processes.
GAI cannot take responsibility for the final version of a study as a researcher. Therefore, GAI cannot be an author in scientific studies. In the articles submitted for evaluation, Generative Artificial Intelligence cannot be stated as an author in any way.
Articles in which GAI is used to replace the author cannot be submitted to the journal for evaluation. Articles that are thought to use GAI outside the permitted areas are investigated editorially, additional information may be requested from the author, and the editor has the right to reject the relevant study if deemed necessary. Plagiarism programmes such as Turnitin and software that detects the contribution of GAI can be used for detection.
It is not permitted to manipulate any image, table or figure in the study by using GAI by increasing, hiding, moving, removing or adding a specific feature in the original. Adjustments to brightness, contrast or colour balance are acceptable as long as they do not obscure or remove any information contained in the original.
You can access the AI Tools Use Declaration Form here.
Permitted Areas of Use of Generative AI:
In this context, in the process of scientific research and preparation of publications, the tools can be used in the areas listed below:
- Idea generation (brainstorming, literature gap identification, hypothesis generation) in the initial phase of the research,
- Online literature search and categorisation of the relevant literature can be used in online literature search. However, it should be taken into consideration that the GAI may present fabricated literature as real, may be unable to evaluate the scientific quality of the literature, may exclude current literature from the search, and problems such as bias are frequently experienced.
- The author(s) may use the artificial intelligence model trained with coding software prepared by the author(s) in data analysis, provided that the code sources are clearly indicated.
- The author(s) may use GAI for the visualisation of research steps or for the tabular or graphical representation of original data produced by the authors themselves.
- The GAI can be used in the translation or language control of scientific studies. It is essential that the final version of the content translated or language-checked with GAI is also checked by the user. The final responsibility for the resulting text belongs to the author(s).
In the case of the use of the above-mentioned form of the GAI in the study, it should be stated which GAI tool was used, how it was used at which stage of the study, the contribution of the GAI to the study and the version of the relevant tool. This information should be provided in the methodology and the acknowledgment section of the articles. In the relevant section, ‘the full name (version number) of the used GAI tool, in which stages of the research it was used, the purpose of its use and contribution to the research’ should be given.
When GAI needs to be cited, it should be in APA style as follows:
In the text;
Inappropriate citation of existing knowledge in the literature without attribution creates ethical problems (OpenAI, 2025).
In the references section;
OpenAI. (2025). ChatGPT (GPT-4o) [LargeLanguageModel]. https://chat.openai.com/chat
Authors are responsible for the originality, accuracy, reliability, validity and integrity of the content of the studies submitted to the journal. Authors are expected to use GAI tools in a responsible manner, observing the principles of publication ethics and in accordance with the publication policy of our journal. It is the responsibility of the authors to review the outputs obtained in the study utilising a GAI tool and to ensure the accuracy of the content.
Please note that;
Generative Artificial Intelligence refers to tools such as ChatGPT or Dall-e that generate content in different formats such as text or images through various prompts or data entry. Content is considered ‘AI-generated’ if the primary creator of the content is an AI tool, even if significant changes are later made to the content generated by the GAI.
For further information:
The manuscripts accepted for publication by the Journal of Spatial Research are published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license.