AI Usage Statement

1 Preamble

The rapid integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools — including large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and similar generative AI systems — into academic research and writing has created both opportunities and challenges for scholarly publishing. The Branna Journal of Engineering and Technology (BJET) recognizes the legitimate utility of AI tools in research workflows while upholding the foundational principles of authorship accountability, research integrity, and intellectual transparency.

This policy establishes binding guidelines for all authors submitting to BJET regarding the use of AI in manuscript preparation, data analysis, figure generation, and the writing process.

2 Guiding Principles

BJET's AI usage policy is anchored in the following principles:

a) Accountability: Every claim, finding, and conclusion in a submitted manuscript must be traceable to a human author who accepts full intellectual and ethical responsibility.

b) Transparency: Authors must disclose all significant uses of AI tools in their research and writing process so that reviewers, editors, and readers can make informed judgments about the work.

c) Integrity: AI tools must not be used to fabricate data, generate false citations, misrepresent results, or circumvent the honest scholarly effort that peer review presupposes.

d) Originality: The intellectual contribution of a submission — its novel ideas, analytical reasoning, and scholarly interpretation — must originate from the human authors, not from AI-generated content.

3 AI and Authorship

AI systems cannot be listed as authors. Authorship at BJET confers rights, responsibilities, and accountability that only humans can bear. Specifically:

• Authors must be able to defend all content in the manuscript during peer review and post-publication queries.
• Authors must take responsibility for the accuracy, validity, and ethical compliance of all data and conclusions.
• Authors must be contactable and legally accountable.

AI tools fulfill none of these criteria. Any submission that lists an AI system (e.g., "ChatGPT," "Claude," "Gemini") as an author will be immediately desk-rejected.

4 Permitted Uses of AI

BJET permits the use of AI tools for the following purposes, provided they are appropriately disclosed:

Permitted Use

Examples

Language editing and grammar correction

Grammarly, ChatGPT for proofreading

Paraphrasing and clarity improvement

Quillbot, Wordtune

Literature search assistance

Semantic Scholar, Elicit, ResearchRabbit

Code assistance for simulations/experiments

GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT for code debugging

Data visualization suggestions

AI-assisted chart type selection

Summarization of prior work for background understanding

Using LLMs to digest large literature corpora

Important: Even for permitted uses, authors remain responsible for verifying all AI-generated suggestions. AI-assisted language editing does not exempt authors from ensuring scientific accuracy and originality of the content.

5 Prohibited Uses of AI

The following uses of AI are strictly prohibited and constitute research misconduct subject to sanctions, including rejection, retraction, and reporting to the author's institution:

• Fabrication of data or results: Using AI to generate synthetic experimental data, numerical results, or statistical outputs that are presented as real.
• AI-generated citations: Submitting references produced or hallucinated by an AI system that do not correspond to real, verifiable publications.
• Ghost-writing the intellectual core: Using AI to generate the Discussion, Conclusions, or core analytical reasoning sections without substantial human intellectual input and critical revision.
• Bypass of originality: Using AI paraphrasing tools to disguise plagiarized content or substantially restructure another author's work to escape detection.
• Misrepresentation in peer review: Using AI to generate reviewer responses, refutations, or correspondence with editors.

6 Disclosure Requirements

Authors must disclose AI tool usage in a dedicated statement within the manuscript. This statement must appear in the Author Contributions section or as a standalone AI Use Disclosure section at the end of the manuscript, before the References.

Recommended format:

"The authors used [Tool Name] for [specific purpose, e.g., language editing of the manuscript draft / code assistance for the simulation framework]. All AI-assisted content was reviewed, verified, and edited by the authors, who take full responsibility for the final submitted work. No AI tools were used to generate data, produce citations, or develop the core analytical content of this manuscript."

If no AI tools were used, authors may include: "The authors declare that no AI tools were used in the preparation of this manuscript."

Failure to disclose known AI tool use constitutes a breach of publication ethics and will be treated in accordance with BJET's Research Misconduct Policy.

7 Reviewer and Editorial Responsibilities

• Reviewers are encouraged — but not required — to use AI-assisted grammar and language tools when writing their reviews, provided they remain the intellectual authors of all evaluations.
• Reviewers must not submit AI-generated reviews as their own expert assessment.
• Editors may use AI-based tools for plagiarism screening, formatting checks, or editorial triage, but all final decisions must reflect human editorial judgment.

8 Enforcement and Sanctions

Violations of this policy discovered pre-publication will result in manuscript rejection. Violations discovered post-publication will trigger an investigation under BJET's Correction and Retraction Policy and may result in:

• Formal retraction of the published article
• Notification to the author's affiliated institution
• A publication ban from BJET for a defined period
• Reporting to relevant professional bodies