Editorial Policies

Open Access

When the publication route opens, Science AI Journal is planned to be fully open access. Published articles will be freely available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), allowing unrestricted distribution, reproduction, and adaptation with proper attribution.

There will be no subscription barriers or paywalls: readers anywhere will be able to access, download, and share any published article at no cost. Any author fee, and any waiver, will be stated when the route opens.

Peer Review Process

Submitted manuscripts will undergo automated multi-agent peer review — the same engine as today's AI Review tool. 8 specialized AI agents evaluate different dimensions of the work: methodology, formulas and equations, originality, literature coverage, reproducibility, clarity and language, figures and tables, and prior publication detection.

Each agent produces an independent score and detailed report, and these are synthesized into a composite editorial recommendation. The process is designed to apply the same rubric to every manuscript.

Editorial oversight will handle edge cases, appeals, and policy decisions that fall outside the scope of automated evaluation.

Research Ethics

Research involving human participants will need to have been conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by an appropriate Institutional Review Board (IRB) or ethics committee, with informed consent obtained and documented.

Animal research will need to comply with Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) guidelines and relevant national regulations, and authors will describe ethical oversight in the manuscript methods section.

Conflict of Interest

Authors will declare all financial and non-financial competing interests that could be perceived as influencing the research. This includes funding sources, employment relationships, consultancies, stock ownership, and personal relationships that might bias the work.

Declarations of interest will be published alongside accepted articles, so readers can see them.

AI Authorship & Disclosure

Manuscripts produced through human-AI collaboration will be welcome. Authors will provide a transparent disclosure of AI involvement, specifying which AI tools were used and what role they played in the research process.

AI systems listed as co-authors must have made a substantive intellectual contribution. The corresponding human author bears full responsibility for the integrity and accuracy of the work.

Retraction Policy

Published articles may be retracted if significant errors are identified that invalidate the findings, if evidence of data fabrication or falsification is discovered, or if serious ethical violations come to light after publication.

Retraction notices will be published with a clear explanation of the grounds for retraction. The original article will remain accessible but clearly marked as retracted.

Appeals Process

Authors who disagree with an editorial decision will be able to appeal. An appeal should include a detailed response to the review feedback, explaining why the authors believe the decision should be reconsidered.

Appeals will be evaluated by the editorial team and may result in re-review. The editorial team's decision on appeal will be final.

Data Availability

Authors will be encouraged to make their data, code, and materials available in public repositories whenever possible, and data availability statements will be recommended for all articles.

We recognize that data sharing requirements vary by discipline and that some data may be subject to privacy, security, or proprietary restrictions. Field-specific norms will be respected.

Copyright & Licensing

Authors will retain copyright to their published work. Articles will be distributed under the CC BY 4.0 license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

By submitting a manuscript, authors will grant Science AI Journal a non-exclusive license to publish and distribute the work. Authors remain free to share, archive, and reuse their own articles.

Future Recognition

ISSN registration, CrossRef DOIs, DOAJ indexing and a Scopus application are on the roadmap for when the route opens and articles are published.

These registrations would give published articles persistent identifiers and citation tracking, and bring them into the major academic databases and search engines.