The editorial board of the journal “Scientific Bulletin of Kherson State University. Series ‘Germanic Studies and Intercultural Communication’” recognizes that artificial intelligence technologies and automated information-processing tools may be valuable for scholarly work, particularly in philology, where language corpora, machine translation systems, text-processing software, automated source discovery, linguistic modelling, and digital humanities methods are increasingly used.

At the same time, the use of such technologies does not relieve authors of personal responsibility for the content of the manuscript, the reliability of findings, the accuracy of citations, compliance with copyright rules, ethical standards, or academic integrity. Artificial intelligence is regarded solely as an auxiliary tool rather than a creator of scholarly knowledge or bearer of authorship responsibility.

The journal supports innovative research methods provided that they are used transparently, responsibly, and under meaningful human supervision.

Permitted Uses of AI

Authors may use AI tools or other digital support systems for auxiliary purposes, including:

• language editing, grammar, spelling, and stylistic improvement;
• technical formatting of manuscripts;
• automated search for relevant sources or bibliographic data;
• preliminary structuring of text or working drafts;
• corpus analysis of linguistic units;
• statistical data processing;
• visualizations based on author-supplied data;
• machine translation of limited text segments subject to careful human revision;
• digital processing of textual datasets in linguistic research.

In all cases, authors must verify outputs, correct possible errors, and ensure the scholarly reliability of the final manuscript.

Prohibited Uses of AI

The journal does not permit the use of AI in ways contrary to academic integrity or misleading to readers. This includes:

• generating the core scholarly content of an article without substantial authorial contribution;
• creating fictitious data, examples, references, quotations, or sources;
• automated conclusions without scholarly verification;
• undisclosed use of generative systems for manuscript writing;
• translating others’ texts and presenting them as original work;
• manipulating peer review, editorial communication, or responses through AI tools;
• using systems that compromise manuscript confidentiality or personal data;
• creating figures, tables, or materials that distort research findings.

Any use of AI intended to mislead may constitute publication misconduct.

Disclosure of AI Use

Where AI technologies have been used in a substantial manner during manuscript preparation, authors must disclose this to the editorial office and include an appropriate statement in the manuscript (for example, in a note, methodology section, or acknowledgements).

The disclosure should specify:

• the name of the tool or system;
• the nature of its use;
• the stage of work at which it was applied;
• the extent of human supervision and verification.

The editorial board reserves the right to request additional clarification.

Authorship and Responsibility

AI systems cannot be listed as authors, co-authors, or responsible contributors to a scholarly publication, since they lack legal personality, cannot assume ethical responsibility, verify findings, or approve the final manuscript.

All scholarly, legal, and ethical responsibility rests solely with the human authors.

Considerations for Philological Research

Given the journal’s profile, particular attention is paid to AI use in translation studies, discourse analysis, stylometry, corpus linguistics, and intercultural studies. Authors must clearly distinguish automatically generated output from their own interpretation and explain the limitations and reliability of digital tools used.

Where machine translation is used either as a research object or as a drafting tool, this must be explicitly stated.

Editorial Oversight

The journal may use similarity-detection tools, analysis of AI-generated content indicators, and other verification methods to protect academic integrity. Where concealed or unethical AI use is identified, the manuscript may be rejected, and published materials may be subject to correction or retraction procedures.