Research with AI

Academic publishers have a range of policies on the use of AI in research papers. In some cases, publishers may prohibit the use of AI for certain aspects of paper development. You should review the specific policies of the target publisher to determine what is permitted.

Here is a sampling of policies available online:

• Elsevier

• JAMA and the JAMA Network

• PLOS ONE

• Sage

• Springer Nature

• Science

• Wiley

The UGA Libraries provides advice in this guide, including references to APA, MLA, Chicago and AMA.  

AI should always be fact checked before use in research. For more on fact checking tips, check out this resource. 

Ethical concerns include potential bias in AI-generated results, privacy and the potential for misleading or incorrect information. For a more comprehensive list of resources and guidance around ethics and AI, consult this guide from the UGA Libraries.  

Using AI in research could complicate the informed consent process with research participants, in that the details of how data/information will be used in the future is unknown. It is important to clearly explain this to potential research participants.  

Researchers must comply with university, funding agency, and IRB guidelines to ensure responsible AI use in handling sensitive or human-subject data. Researchers should always consider data ownership, potential future use and the confidential nature of any information before using AI.  The AI tools provided by the University of Georgia, include customer data protection, meaning that the tools do not retain prompts or responses issued by the user and they are not used to train large language models.

• Microsoft Copilot with Commercial Data Protection is an AI-powered assistant, designed to boost productivity by helping with writing, research and organization.

• Gemini with Customer Data Protection is Google’s AI chatbot that supports writing, brainstorming, and summarizing information.

• NotebookLM with Customer Data Protection is Google’s research and note-taking tool that lets you upload sources and interact with them using AI.

When using licensed resources from the UGA Libraries, if allowed by contract, use of those materials would be limited to these tools so that the licensed content is not training large language models.  

A recently released report by the U.S. Copyright Office concludes that the outputs of generative AI can be protected by copyright only where a human author has determined sufficient expressive elements.  Court cases around fair use determination of training LLMs are still evolving. A summary of the recent Anthropic ruling can be found here.

Find additional FAQs re: AI and Research at UGA here