The BALANCE: Economic, Business, Management and Accounting Journal recognizes the increasing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), including Generative Artificial Intelligence (Generative AI), Large Language Models (LLMs), and other AI-assisted technologies, in research and scholarly communication.

BALANCE: Economic, Business, Management and Accounting Journal supports the responsible, transparent, and ethical use of AI as a supporting tool, while maintaining that human intellectual contribution, scholarly judgment, originality, and accountability must remain central to the research and publication process.

This policy applies to authors, editors, and peer reviewers involved in the submission, evaluation, review, and publication of manuscripts in BALANCE: Economic, Business, Management and Accounting Journal.

General Principles

The use of AI in research and scholarly publishing must adhere to the following principles:

• Human responsibility: AI must supplement rather than replace human intellectual contribution, expertise, judgment, and accountability.
• Transparency: Material use of Generative AI or AI-assisted technologies must be clearly disclosed.
• Accuracy and integrity: Users remain fully responsible for verifying the accuracy, validity, originality, citations, references, data, analyses, and other content assisted by AI.
• Confidentiality: Confidential, unpublished, personal, proprietary, or sensitive information must not be entered into AI systems where confidentiality and data protection cannot be guaranteed.
• Research integrity: AI must not be used to fabricate, falsify, manipulate, or misrepresent research data, findings, evidence, citations, or scholarly contributions.
• Human oversight: All AI-assisted outputs must be critically reviewed, verified, and, where necessary, substantially revised by the responsible human author, reviewer, or editor.

Use of AI by Authors

Authors may use AI-assisted technologies as supporting tools during the research and manuscript preparation process, provided that such use does not replace the authors' intellectual and scholarly responsibilities.

Permitted Uses

Subject to appropriate human oversight and disclosure where required, AI-assisted technologies may be used for:

• language refinement, grammar correction, and improvement of readability;
• copy-editing of text originally written by the authors;
• translation of author-created content;
• idea exploration and brainstorming during the preliminary stages of research;
• assistance in identifying keywords or search strategies for literature searches;
• classification and organization of literature;
• coding and programming assistance;
• methodological exploration, provided that the final methodological decisions are made and justified by the authors;
• formatting or organizational assistance;
• preparation of conceptual diagrams, process flow diagrams, graphical abstracts, or research visualizations; and
• data visualization based on authentic data that have already been collected, verified, and appropriately analysed by the researchers.

All such uses must remain under appropriate human supervision.

Prohibited Uses of AI by Authors

Generative AI must not replace the fundamental intellectual contribution expected from authors.

Authors must not use Generative AI to:

• generate substantial portions of a manuscript as a substitute for the authors' own scholarly writing;
• generate an abstract, introduction, literature review, hypotheses, theoretical arguments, methodology, results, discussion, or conclusion without substantive intellectual development, verification, and authorship by the researchers;
• fabricate or generate research data that are presented as actual empirical observations;
• substitute synthetic data for missing empirical data without a scientifically valid, explicitly justified, and transparently reported methodology;
• fabricate, modify, falsify, or manipulate research findings;
• create fictitious citations, references, sources, or quotations;
• cite sources that the authors have not appropriately verified;
• generate statistical findings and report them as authentic research results without independent analysis and verification;
• manipulate empirical images, figures, documents, or other research evidence in ways that misrepresent the original information;
• generate interpretations or conclusions that have not been critically evaluated and validated by the authors;
• conceal plagiarism or reproduce the intellectual work of others without appropriate attribution; or
• otherwise use AI in a manner that compromises the originality, reliability, validity, transparency, or integrity of the research.

The authors remain fully accountable for every part of the submitted manuscript regardless of whether AI-assisted technologies were used.

AI and Authorship

AI tools, Generative AI systems, Large Language Models, chatbots, and other non-human technologies cannot be listed as authors or co-authors of manuscripts submitted to BALANCE: Economic, Business, Management and Accounting Journal.

Authorship requires the ability to:

• make a substantial intellectual contribution;
• take responsibility for the accuracy and integrity of the work;
• approve the final version of the manuscript;
• respond to questions concerning the integrity of the research;
• declare conflicts of interest;
• comply with copyright and licensing requirements; and
• accept accountability for the published work.

These responsibilities can only be assumed by human authors. Authors are therefore fully responsible for any content produced, edited, translated, analysed, or otherwise assisted by AI technologies.

Disclosure of AI Use

BALANCE: Economic, Business, Management and Accounting Journal requires authors to transparently disclose any material use of Generative AI or AI-assisted technologies in the research or manuscript preparation process.

The disclosure should identify:

• the name of the AI tool;
• the version, where available;
• how the tool was used;
• the purpose for which it was used; and
• the part of the research or manuscript preparation process in which it was applied.

The declaration should be provided in a separate section entitled: Declaration of Generative AI and AI-Assisted Technologies.

The following statement may be used:

Where AI has been used as part of the research methodology, data analysis, coding process, or another element that affects the reproducibility of the research, authors must additionally describe such use in the Methods section with sufficient detail to enable appropriate scholarly evaluation.

Routine spelling and grammar checking tools that do not use Generative AI do not normally require disclosure.

Accuracy of References and Citations

Authors are fully responsible for the accuracy and authenticity of all references and citations included in their manuscripts. AI-generated references must never be incorporated into a manuscript without verification against the original source.

Authors should personally verify that:

• the cited publication exists;
• author names, titles, journals, volumes, issues, pages, years, and DOIs are accurate;
• the cited work actually supports the statement for which it is referenced; and
• the original source has been appropriately consulted.

Fabricated or unverifiable AI-generated citations may constitute a breach of research and publication integrity.

AI-Generated Images, Figures, and Visual Materials

AI-assisted technologies may be used to create illustrative or conceptual materials, such as:

• conceptual diagrams;
• research framework illustrations;
• process flow diagrams;
• graphical abstracts; and
• visualizations based on authentic research data.

Where Generative AI materially contributes to the creation of such content, its use should be appropriately disclosed. AI-generated images or materials must not be presented as authentic empirical evidence.

Generative AI must not be used to fabricate, alter, conceal, remove, move, or introduce features into research evidence, empirical images, research documents, or figures in a manner that could misrepresent the underlying data or research findings.

All AI-assisted visual materials must comply with applicable copyright, licensing, attribution, and intellectual property requirements.

Research Data and AI

The use of AI must not compromise the authenticity, traceability, or integrity of research data.

Authors must not use Generative AI to fabricate data or generate artificial observations and subsequently present them as genuine data collected from respondents, organizations, financial statements, experiments, interviews, archives, databases, or other research sources.

Where AI or machine-learning methods constitute a legitimate component of the research methodology, their use must be transparently explained in the manuscript, including relevant information regarding the methods, tools, validation procedures, and human oversight applied.

Authors remain responsible for ensuring the reliability, validity, and reproducibility of AI-assisted analyses.

Confidentiality, Data Protection, and Intellectual Property

Authors must exercise particular caution when using third-party AI platforms.

Unpublished research materials, identifiable participant information, proprietary information, copyrighted content, confidential organizational information, or sensitive research data should not be uploaded to AI systems unless appropriate confidentiality, security, legal, ethical, and intellectual property safeguards are in place.

Authors are responsible for reviewing the terms and conditions of any AI platform used and ensuring compliance with applicable:

• research ethics requirements;
• privacy and data protection obligations;
• confidentiality agreements;
• copyright requirements;
• intellectual property rights; and
• institutional or contractual restrictions.

Use of AI by Peer Reviewers

Manuscripts submitted to BALANCE: Economic, Business, Management and Accounting Journal are confidential scholarly documents.

Peer reviewers must not upload manuscripts, tables, figures, supplementary files, datasets, author information, or other unpublished submission materials into publicly accessible Generative AI tools, Large Language Models, or other external AI systems.

Peer reviewers must not use Generative AI to:

• summarize a manuscript as a substitute for reading it;
• evaluate its theoretical contribution;
• evaluate its methodology;
• analyse its data or results;
• assess its originality or novelty;
• formulate substantive reviewer comments;
• generate the intellectual content of a peer-review report; or
• recommend acceptance, revision, or rejection.

Peer-review reports must represent the reviewer's own expertise, critical analysis, professional judgment, and scholarly assessment.

Reviewers may use AI-assisted tools solely for copy-editing or language refinement of a review they have personally written, provided that doing so does not disclose confidential information from the manuscript.

Where Generative AI is materially used for language refinement of a peer-review report, reviewers should transparently disclose such use to the editorial team. Reviewers remain fully responsible and accountable for the accuracy, rigor, validity, tone, and integrity of their reviews.

Use of AI by Editors

Editors must maintain the confidentiality and integrity of all manuscripts and peer-review materials.

Editors must not upload unpublished manuscripts, supplementary materials, research data, reviewer reports, author information, figures, tables, or other confidential submission materials into publicly accessible Generative AI tools or other AI systems where confidentiality cannot be guaranteed.

Generative AI must not be used to replace editorial judgment in:

• evaluating the originality or novelty of a manuscript;
• evaluating theoretical or methodological quality;
• determining research integrity;
• analysing the scientific validity of findings;
• assessing reviewer recommendations; or
• making acceptance, revision, or rejection decisions.

All editorial decisions must ultimately be made by qualified human editors.

AI-assisted technologies may be used for authorized administrative or technical purposes only where appropriate safeguards for confidentiality, security, transparency, and human oversight are in place.

AI and Peer-Review Integrity

BALANCE: Economic, Business, Management and Accounting Journal considers the confidentiality and independence of peer review fundamental to scholarly publishing.

Using Generative AI to conduct substantive peer review or editorial evaluation may compromise:

• confidentiality;
• intellectual property;
• data privacy;
• independent scholarly judgment; and
• the integrity of the peer-review process.

Unauthorized disclosure of manuscripts to an AI system or inappropriate AI-generated peer review may therefore be treated as peer-review misconduct.

Human Accountability

The use of AI does not transfer responsibility to an AI provider, software developer, platform, algorithm, or technology.

At all stages of publication:

• Authors are responsible for their manuscripts.
• Reviewers are responsible for their reviews.
• Editors are responsible for editorial decisions.

BALANCE: Economic, Business, Management and Accounting Journal maintains that substantive scholarly judgment and accountability must remain human responsibilities.

Non-Compliance and Editorial Action

Failure to comply with this AI Policy may constitute a breach of BALANCE: Economic, Business, Management and Accounting Journal's research and publication ethics.

Depending on the nature and severity of the issue, BALANCE: Economic, Business, Management and Accounting Journal may:

• request clarification or documentation regarding AI use;
• require authors to revise or correct the manuscript;
• require verification of references, data, analyses, images, or other materials;
• suspend the editorial or peer-review process;
• reject the manuscript;
• investigate potential research or publication misconduct;
• notify relevant parties where appropriate; or
• take appropriate post-publication action, including correction, expression of concern, or retraction where warranted.

Cases involving suspected research or publication misconduct will be handled in accordance with BALANCE: Economic, Business, Management and Accounting Journal's publication ethics procedures and relevant internationally recognized standards of publication ethics.

Policy Development and Updates

Artificial Intelligence technologies and standards governing their use in scholarly research and publishing continue to evolve.

BALANCE: Economic, Business, Management and Accounting Journal therefore reserves the right to revise this policy periodically in response to technological developments, emerging ethical concerns, and evolving international standards and best practices in scholarly publishing.

Policy Basis

This policy has been developed with reference to internationally recognized principles and practices concerning the responsible use of Artificial Intelligence in scholarly publishing, including guidance provided by Taylor & Francis on the use of Generative AI in academic publishing and Emerald Publishing's Research and Publishing Ethics and Artificial Intelligence policies, together with established principles of publication ethics and research integrity.