By: Dr. Reginal “Reggie” Harrell
One of the interesting challenges and opportunities for all of us who wish to share our work with colleagues in professional journals is considering the question of how appropriate it is to use artificial intelligence (AI) in assisting with our efforts to publish. As co-editor of our Section’s journal, I am seeing what appears to be an increase in the use of AI in submissions under consideration. This is not unique to the North American Journal of Aquaculture. To that point, our Society’s journal editors and editorial staff have had ongoing discussions as to how we should embrace the use of AI in publishing. To date, other than general guidelines (see below), we do not have an AFS policy on this matter. Without a directed policy for guidance, I have been asked by our newsletter editor to give some thoughts for consideration to our Section members on what is the appropriate use of AI in our scientific, management, and husbandry writings that we wish to share with our colleagues.
First and foremost, it is important to be transparent (full disclosure) to the journal in reporting how and at what level AI was used in assisting with design, analysis, citing references, and writing your manuscript. This disclosure is appropriate in the ethical declaration section at the end of all NAJA submissions. That said, AI can be a useful tool in presenting your intellectual contributions to science, management, and husbandry. It can be helpful in improving your use of grammar and syntax and improving the clarity of sentence structure and paragraphs, especially for authors for whom English is a second language. It is even useful to search for citations that may be appropriate for your effort; however, one should never use a citation that is not verified as being appropriate for the scope of your work. Always, when using AI to assist in your writing, carefully review and verify what is being written.
Any use of AI that leads to hypothesis generation, fabrication of data and interpretation, use of inappropriate references, plagiarizing others’ work (including self-plagiarism) without appropriate citations, and even getting AI to draw conclusions are not only unethical, but it undermines the integrity of your writing and the validity of your scientific rigor. Remember, your manuscript submission reflects your and your co-author’s intellectual and scientific thinking, personal character, and how your hard work may benefit improving and advancing our aquaculture discipline.
To summarize, like statistical software and grammar and syntax checkers, AI can be a powerful tool to: 1) improve your scientific study and writing skill sets, 2) be helpful in clarifying your writing and thought presentation in a concise, structured format, 3) help in writing topical sentences for paragraph structure, and 4) help rephrase sentences and paragraphs for improved flow. To that end, it is important that you have verified that each reference you used is appropriate and relevant to your submission, you are willing and able
to defend what you are stating, and you are transparent (fully disclosing) about how and at what level you used AI in your study and in your manuscript generation.
In the spirit of disclosure, while the content and emphasis are based on my years’ experience as an editor, for the purposes of this article, I conducted a search for appropriate use of AI in writing scientific articles. Some of the language included above reflects the results I gleaned from that search, wherein the wording was better framed than my first draft.
The following statement is included in the guide for authors on all AFS journals. https://academic.oup.com/naja/pages/general-instructions#Publication%20and%20Research%20Ethics
Natural language processing tools driven by artificial intelligence (AI) do not qualify as authors, and the Journal will screen for them in author lists. The use of AI (for example, to help generate content, write code, or process data) should be disclosed during submission and in the Methods or Acknowledgments section of manuscripts. Please see the COPE position statement on Authorship and AI for more details.
The COPE policy is available from that link above or here: https://publicationethics.org/guidance/cope-position/authorship-and-ai-tools
This article was originally published in December 2025 for the FCS Newsletter.