A Comparative Review of Imaging Journal Policies for Use of AI in Manuscript Generation.

Rationale And Objectives: Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are rapidly evolving and offering new advances almost on a day-by-day basis, including various tools for manuscript generation and modification. On the other hand, these potentially time- and effort-saving solutions come with potential bias, factual error, and plagiarism risks. Some journals have started to update their author guidelines in reference to AI-generated or AI-assisted manuscripts. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate author guidelines for including AI use policies in radiology journals and compare scientometric data between journals with and without explicit AI use policies.

Materials And Methods: This cross-sectional study included 112 MEDLINE-indexed imaging journals and evaluated their author guidelines between 13 October 2023 and 16 October 2023. Journals were identified based on subject matter and association with a radiological society. The authors' guidelines and editorial policies were evaluated for the use of AI in manuscript preparation and specific AI-generated image policies. We assessed the existence of an AI usage policy among subspecialty imaging journals. The scientometric scores of journals with and without AI use policies were compared using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test.

Results: Among 112 MEDLINE-indexed radiology journals, 80 journals were affiliated with an imaging society, and 32 were not. 69 (61.6%) of 112 imaging journals had an AI usage policy, and 40 (57.9%) of 69 mentioned a specific policy about AI-generated figures. CiteScore (4.9 vs 4, p = 0.023), Source Normalized Impact per Paper (1.12 vs 0.83, p = 0.06), Scientific Journal Ranking (0.75 vs 0.54, p = 0.010) and Journal Citation Indicator (0.77 vs 0.62, p = 0.038) were significantly higher in journals with an AI policy.

Conclusion: The majority of imaging journals provide guidelines for AI-generated content, but still, a substantial number of journals do not have AI usage policies or do not require disclosure for non-human-created manuscripts. Journals with an established AI policy had higher citation and impact scores.