AI Ethics

The Journal of Mathematical Pedagogy (JoMP) is committed to transparency, ethical authorship, academic integrity, and responsible scholarly communication. This policy provides guidance for authors, peer reviewers, editors, and editorial staff on the appropriate use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-assisted technologies in manuscript preparation, peer review, and editorial work. The policy will be reviewed periodically and updated as necessary to reflect developments in AI and scholarly publishing.

This policy distinguishes between AI used to assist writing and AI used as part of a research methodology. Authors may use AI for limited language assistance, while the use of AI for data processing, analysis, or interpretation as part of the research must be described and justified in the manuscript where relevant. AI must not replace the authors’ core scholarly contributions, independent reasoning, or responsibility for the work.

General Principles

  1. Human accountability: people remain responsible for the content, assessments, and decisions they produce.
  2. Transparency: substantive use of generative AI in manuscript preparation must be disclosed.
  3. Academic integrity: AI must not replace original scholarly contribution, mathematical reasoning, or independent academic judgment.
  4. Verification: AI-assisted outputs must be critically checked for accuracy, completeness, bias, and appropriateness.
  5. Confidentiality and privacy: AI use must not compromise unpublished research, personal information, intellectual property, or confidential editorial materials.
  6. Research integrity: AI must not be used to fabricate, falsify, manipulate, or misrepresent data, findings, citations, or scholarly contributions.

Policy for Authors

Permitted Uses

Authors may use generative AI and AI-assisted technologies for limited and appropriate support, provided that all outputs are reviewed and verified by the authors. Permitted uses include:

  1. Correcting grammar, spelling, punctuation, and language errors, and improving the readability of text written by the authors.
  2. Translating author-written material, provided the translation is checked for accuracy and meaning.
  3. Formatting references and bibliographic information, provided every source and citation detail is independently verified.
  4. Supporting coding, data processing, statistical analysis, or visualization when these activities form part of the research, provided that the methods, outputs, and limitations are verified and accurately reported.

Assisting with preliminary organization of ideas, provided that the authors independently develop the research rationale, theoretical arguments, interpretation, conclusions, and recommendations.

Supporting the development of research materials when their validity, originality, and ethical suitability are independently established.

Prohibited Uses

Authors must not use generative AI or AI-assisted technologies to:

  1. Replace their own intellectual contribution in developing the research rationale, theoretical arguments, methodology, interpretation of results, discussion, conclusions, or recommendations.
  2. Generate substantial portions of a manuscript and submit them as original scholarly work without meaningful intellectual contribution, critical review, and substantive revision by the authors.
  3. Fabricate, falsify, manipulate, or misrepresent data, mathematical solutions, student responses, interview transcripts, observations, statistical results, or other research evidence.
  4. Invent references, citations, quotations, research findings, or unsupported claims.
  5. Transform another person’s work to conceal plagiarism, evade similarity detection, or misrepresent originality.
  6. Create, modify, or manipulate images, diagrams, graphs, photographs, or other visual elements in a way that misrepresents research evidence or findings. Any AI-generated or AI-modified visual material must be disclosed and is permitted only when consistent with the research design and accepted research ethics.
  7. Upload identifiable participant information, confidential educational records, unpublished research data, or other sensitive materials to AI systems without appropriate authorization and adequate data protection.
  8. Misrepresent the extent, purpose, or nature of AI assistance used in preparing the manuscript.

Research that explicitly investigates generative AI or its applications in mathematics education is not prohibited. Such research must be methodologically sound, ethically conducted, and transparently reported.

Human Oversight and Verification

Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, completeness, and integrity of the submitted and published manuscript, including any content produced with AI assistance. Authors must independently verify mathematical statements, proofs, calculations, statistical analyses, interpretations, citations, and references. In mathematics education research, particular care must be taken to ensure the correctness of mathematical reasoning, the validity of pedagogical claims, and the accurate representation of participants’ responses and learning evidence.

AI and Authorship

Generative AI systems and AI-assisted technologies must not be listed as authors or co-authors. AI systems cannot take responsibility for the integrity of research, approve the final manuscript, or respond to editorial and scholarly inquiries as a human author must. Authorship must reflect genuine scholarly contributions by human researchers.

Declaration of AI Use

Authors must disclose substantive use of generative AI or AI-assisted technologies in preparing the manuscript. The declaration should identify the tool and, where available, its version, and describe the purpose of its use. Place the statement under the heading “Declaration of Generative AI and AI-Assisted Technologies” before the References.

Example when AI has been used:

“During the preparation of this manuscript, the author(s) used [name of AI tool and version, where available] for [specific purpose]. The author(s) critically reviewed, verified, and edited the AI-assisted content and take full responsibility for the accuracy, originality, and integrity of the published work.”

Example when no generative AI or AI-assisted technologies requiring disclosure have been used:

“The author(s) declare that no generative AI or AI-assisted technologies were used in the preparation of this manuscript.”

Routine use of basic spelling, grammar, or reference-management tools that do not generate substantive content does not normally require a separate declaration. Disclosure of legitimate AI assistance is not, by itself, grounds for rejection; however, undisclosed or inappropriate use may constitute a breach of publication ethics.

Policy for Peer Reviewers

Independent Scholarly Assessment

Peer reviewers must assess manuscripts independently, using their own expertise, critical evaluation, academic judgment, and ethical responsibility. Reviewers must not use generative AI or AI-assisted technologies to:

  1. Analyze, evaluate, interpret, or assess the substantive scholarly content of a submitted manuscript.
  2. Determine a manuscript’s validity, originality, significance, quality, or suitability.
  3. Generate or substantially draft substantive peer-review comments, assessments, or recommendations.
  4. Formulate recommendations concerning acceptance, revision, or rejection.
  5. Replace their own independent scholarly judgment.

Confidentiality

Reviewers must not upload, enter, copy, transmit, or otherwise provide a submitted manuscript or any part of it to public, unsecured, or unauthorized AI systems. This includes manuscript text, abstracts, research data, figures, tables, supplementary files, author responses, review forms, unpublished findings, and other confidential peer-review materials.

Reviewer Responsibility

Reviewers remain responsible for the accuracy, fairness, independence, confidentiality, and integrity of their reports. Any use of technology in peer review must not compromise confidentiality, independent judgment, or peer-review integrity. Violations may be treated as breaches of peer-review confidentiality or publication ethics.

Policy for Editors and Editorial Staff

Permitted Supportive Uses

Editors and editorial staff may use AI for appropriate supportive and non-decisional tasks, including:

  1. Grammar, spelling, and language polishing of non-confidential editorial text.
  2. Improving the clarity and structure of editorial communications.
  3. Formatting and administrative assistance, organization of editorial notes, and workflow support.
  4. Technical screening for the presence of required manuscript sections or declarations.
  5. Metadata organization and development of editorial templates, workflows, checklists, and journal policy documents.
  6. Other appropriate administrative activities that do not replace scholarly, ethical, or editorial judgment.

AI-assisted editorial work must be reviewed and verified by the responsible editor or authorized editorial staff member.

Confidential Editorial Materials

Submitted manuscripts, reviewer reports, author responses, research data, supplementary files, confidential editorial notes, and other manuscript-related confidential materials must not be uploaded to public, unsecured, or unauthorized AI systems. Where AI use with confidential materials is necessary, it may occur only through an appropriately secure, private, offline, or journal-controlled system with adequate safeguards for confidentiality, privacy, data protection, access control, and intellectual property.

Prohibited Editorial Uses

Editors and editorial staff must not use AI to:

  1. Determine whether a manuscript should be accepted, revised, or rejected.
  2. Replace scholarly or ethical judgment or the independent assessment of peer reviewers.
  3. Determine scientific validity, mathematical correctness, originality, or scholarly merit without independent human assessment.
  4. Make final judgments concerning research misconduct or ethical violations without appropriate human investigation and assessment.
  5. Determine corrections, retractions, or other substantive post-publication actions without independent editorial judgment.

All editorial decisions must be made by human editors based on academic expertise, peer-review reports, editorial assessment, ethical considerations, and applicable JoMP policies.

Transparency and Accountability

Editors and editorial staff must disclose substantive use of AI in editorial work where appropriate, identifying the tool and its general purpose. Routine supportive uses, such as spelling correction, formatting, or non-substantive language refinement, do not normally require separate disclosure. All AI-assisted outputs remain subject to human review, verification, and final approval. Editors and editorial staff remain responsible for confidentiality, editorial integrity, and all editorial decisions.

Research Integrity, Data Protection, and Intellectual Property

All users of AI-assisted technologies must respect copyright, intellectual property rights, research ethics, participant privacy, and applicable data protection requirements. AI must not be used to misappropriate intellectual property, misrepresent the origin of scholarly content, or disclose confidential information without authorization.

Authors conducting research involving students, teachers, schools, or other participants must handle personal information, educational records, and research materials in accordance with applicable ethical approval, informed consent, and data-protection requirements. AI-generated mathematical content, research instruments, educational materials, and analytical outputs incorporated into a manuscript must be critically evaluated for accuracy, suitability, and potential bias.

Monitoring, Investigation, and Consequences

JoMP may investigate suspected violations of this policy in accordance with its publication ethics procedures. Depending on the nature and severity of a violation, the journal may request clarification or disclosure, require corrections or revisions, reject a submitted manuscript, publish a correction, retract a published article where justified, or take other appropriate action consistent with its publication ethics policies and applicable requirements.

Actions will be based on an assessment of available evidence and the circumstances of the case. AI-detection tools alone should not be treated as conclusive proof of misconduct.

Policy Review and Implementation

This policy applies to manuscripts submitted to JoMP and to the relevant activities of authors, peer reviewers, editors, and editorial staff. JoMP may review and revise this policy periodically in response to developments in generative AI, scholarly publishing standards, research ethics, and applicable legal requirements.

By submitting a manuscript to JoMP, authors acknowledge their responsibility to comply with this policy and all other applicable journal guidelines.