Written by Alex O’Connell, Senior Supervising Editor at Edward Elgar Publishing.

Navigating AI 

Whether you are enthusiastic, critical or entirely indifferent to it,  AI is woven into many of the systems we use on a daily basis including common word processing systems.  Being mindful of the use of AI will help you and your readers, while also protecting your research and work. EEP is committed to upholding high standards of integrity and originality in academic work whilst being aware of the potential uses and benefits of AI. 

No generative AI, please 

We don’t allow the use of tools like ChatGPT or Google Gemini to create substantive content. Your work should be all you! Generating content includes data analysis and the development of written arguments. However, there are assistive AI tools that can help and we don’t discourage the use of these and neither do you need to acknowledge their use. This would include tools such as Grammarly, Draftsmith and such like. Assistive AI doesn’t create content or affect the originality of your work.

Be transparent

If you’re using AI to aid in your research process it’s crucial to be transparent in your manuscript and to let us know ahead of submission. AI and LLM Models may not be listed as authors or contributors to your work.

As a scholarly publisher we are here to support the academic community by publishing good scholarship and as AI tools develop in new ways and scholarly best practice becomes more nuanced we aim to reflect this in our guidelines.  We would therefore be pleased to discuss how you are using AI.

“When James Joyce and Lenin first met…” and other stories

Remember that AI is not infallible and can cause problems including plagiarism, copyright infringement, errors (known as ‘hallucinations’) and duplication. Common examples of hallucinations include seemingly/initially plausible but inaccurate statements and wrongful attributions. AI generated images can include issues that are not always immediately apparent such as flags that are incorrect, anatomically distorted people and adding in elements that don’t exist in real life.

Protect your work! 

Don’t put your work into Open AI platforms, especially free to use generative AI platforms. It may be tempting to use free AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude to check language and summarise or rewrite passages but standard terms of use mean that your work can then be used to train the platform, and provide answers to others, without acknowledging your work as the source.  If your book is edited, make sure your contributing authors understand their responsibilities and talk through any concerns they might have as soon as possible. The AI landscape is evolving constantly so if in doubt contact your commissioning editor for advice. Our full AI policy can be found here.