Dear Colleague,
The AAS Publications Committee is pleased to share the results of a community request: guidelines for the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, including large language models, in preparing and reviewing manuscripts submitted to the AAS journals.
Astronomers and planetary scientists are already using AI in many ways, from polishing prose to accelerating code development to assisting with data analysis. Many of you told us, through the AI-use survey we circulated to membership and through direct conversations with the editors, that you wanted clarity on how to use these tools ethically and transparently in your work. The guidelines prepared by the Publications Committee, with input from the editorial board, are intended to address these concerns.
View the AI Guidelines on Our Policy Page
The Publications Committee is a group of working astronomers and planetary scientists — volunteers from across the community who took this on because we care about the integrity of our shared literature. We drafted these guidelines by drawing on current scholarly publishing industry standards and reshaping that guidance around what matters for our authors and fellow astronomers and planetary scientists; the guidelines were informed directly by what you told us in the AI-use survey and from conversations with you as colleagues.
This guidance comes as two companion documents — one for authors and one for reviewers — because the concerns differ for each. As an example, the reviewer guide addresses the confidentiality of unpublished work during peer review, which is its own serious issue. On the author side, the scope covers AI use anywhere while preparing a manuscript for submission — including text, code, and generated figures or images — but not general use of AI in your research more broadly. The guidelines spell out which uses call for a disclosure statement and provide example language you can adapt directly for your specific cases.
These AI guidelines, including a required AI-usage disclosure statement for all submissions, will take effect for new submissions later this fall. We intend these guidelines to be a living document: we expect the landscape around these tools to keep shifting, and we will revisit and update the guidance as it does. If you have a question or feedback, you are welcome to submit it via this form. This document exists because members spoke up the first time; we’d like to keep hearing from you as we go.
Thank you for the trust you place in your journals, and for the effort so many of you already contribute to maintain their value and integrity.
Angela M. Stickle
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Chair, AAS Publications Committee
