APS Press Guidelines on the Use of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) have had a huge impact on the world of academic research and writing. These tools may provide new methods of scholarly analysis, but they must not affect the core practices that book and journal authors, peer reviewers, editors, and other publishing colleagues collectively participate in–namely, writing and reviewing.

• The APS Press will not publish work whose arguments or style have been affected by the use of LLMs or generative AI. For the purposes of the APS Press, generative AI is that which is transformative to the author’s argument, intent, prose style, and/or research, whether this involves creation of new material or comparison, analysis, or summarization of the same. Authors may not appropriate content from AI sources to formulate their argument or research question, or to change their writing style. 
• Book authors and journal contributors must explicitly acknowledge and disclose their use of artificial intelligence tools such as Large Language Models (LLMs) or generative AI tools to their acquiring or managing editors at the outset of their relationship with the Press. 
• Acceptable uses may include, but are not limited to, the synthesis or organization of large data sets, checking grammar (not adjusting style), bibliographic searches, or formatting citations, but every author must disclose any use of AI tools to their editor. The APS Press Staff will decide if the disclosed usage is acceptable. If the use is deemed acceptable, use of the tool must be acknowledged within the manuscript (see guidance for generative AI sources from MLA and Chicago). Further, any use of this technology for transcription, textual or numerical analysis, visual comparison, or any other element of a submitted manuscript must be disclosed and discussed as part of the book or article’s methodology. 
• AI tools do not meet legal criteria for authorship; only human authors can hold copyright and enter publishing agreements. Therefore, no APS Press publication—book or journal—accepts work written by generative AI.  
• Book authors and journal contributors are fully responsible for their work, including their use of AI tools. Authors and contributors should carefully review the terms and conditions of any AI tools they use; use of these tools means the author must accept responsibility for those terms, which could compromise the author’s intellectual property rights and undermine copyright protections. 
• Peer reviewers of books or journal articles are not permitted to feed content into any Large Language Model (LLM) or similar tools (e.g., ChatGPT); this has the potential to be a serious violation of the author’s intellectual property rights. Peer reviewers may not use any generative AI tool to create their peer review. 

• AI tools may not be used for extended translations, but authors should check with their editors and acknowledge the use when relying heavily on AI for any translations. Translations of whole works written in another language that are created by generative AI will not be accepted for publication.  

  Failure to disclose the use of any generative AI or LLM technology in the writing of the book will result in a rejection of the manuscript at any stage of the editorial process.