Generative AI Use Policy

Effective date: 1 September 2026

Our position

Runnymede Academic Press (RAP) regards generative artificial intelligence as one of the most transformative tools ever made available to scholarship. Used responsibly, it has the potential to greatly enhance the ability and capacity of scholars to expand human understanding and knowledge. We therefore welcome it without reservation: we encourage its use, we expect its use, and we treat it as a normal and legitimate part of the contemporary scholarly toolkit.

We do not penalise authors for using AI, in any way. Neither actively or passively, directly or indirectly. We do not require authors to disclose, justify, itemise, or otherwise account for their use of AI tools, and such use will never, in itself, count against a submission or its authors at any stage of consideration. To single AI out for special scrutiny would itself be a form of discrimination against a legitimate method of scholarship, and RAP is firmly against that.

This openness is not a relaxation of standards. RAP’s standards are exacting, but they apply to the work, not to the means by which it was produced.

Authors

Authors are free to use AI tools at any stage of preparing a manuscript, to whatever extent they judge useful, on the same footing as any other instrument of research and writing.

What RAP asks of authors is what it has always asked, independent of any tool: that they take full responsibility for the accuracy, integrity, and originality of their work. An author is accountable for everything in a submission, however it was produced, including the correctness of every claim, the validity of every result, and the existence and accuracy of every cited source. Because generative tools can produce convincing but incorrect material, that responsibility includes verifying anything a tool has contributed before relying on it. This is not a constraint peculiar to AI; it is the ordinary duty of authorship, applied evenly to every method.

What RAP does not support: fraudulent use

RAP’s one firm line is against fraudulent use of AI, and that line is drawn around conduct, not tools. We do not support, and will act against, fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, and the misrepresentation of unverified or invented material as genuine scholarship. These are violations whether committed with an AI tool, with other software, or with no tool at all. The wrong is the fraud, never the instrument.

Where such conduct is identified in a published article, RAP responds through its ordinary publication-ethics processes: correction, expression of concern, or retraction as appropriate, exactly as it would for any other breach of research integrity.

Authorship

AI tools cannot be listed as authors of a work published by RAP. Authorship carries responsibility and accountability that only a person can hold: a tool, however capable, cannot take responsibility for a body of work, agree to its publication, or answer for its integrity. Everyone who meets RAP’s authorship criteria is a person.

AI as a source

Generative AI is not cited as a source of fact in a RAP article. Where an AI tool helps an author locate or assemble material, the author remains responsible for consulting, verifying, and citing the underlying primary sources in the normal way. This protects both the author and the scholarly record against the well-known risk of plausible but non-existent references.

AI in RAP’s editorial and production processes

RAP uses generative AI within its own editorial, peer-review, and production processes, just as it encourages authors to use it in theirs. A publisher that asks authors to embrace these tools should be willing to use them in its own work.

In peer review, AI supports the work of our referees and editors. It does not replace it. The assessment of a submission, and every editorial decision, remains that of the responsible human reviewer or editor, who is accountable for it. AI never overrides the human reviewer.

The confidentiality of unpublished work is a priority throughout. RAP uses these tools under account terms that prevent submitted material from being used to train the underlying AI models.

In production, RAP uses AI to assist in preparing accepted articles for publication.

In summary

RAP encourages and expects the responsible use of AI in scholarship, asks only that authors stand fully behind their work as they always have, and reserves its objection for fraud wherever, and by whatever means, it occurs. We judge the work, not the method.

Contact: editor@runnymedeacademicpress.com

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