Use of Artificial Intelligence Tools During Peer Review
Dear Reviewers,
At Agronomía Mesoamericana, we deeply appreciate the work you carry out as part of the peer-review process. Your specialized judgment is essential to ensuring the technical quality of the manuscripts we publish and makes the continuity of the journal’s editorial work possible.
In this context, we would like to emphasize the importance of having manuscripts evaluated directly by reviewers, based on their own knowledge and expert judgment. For this reason, we respectfully ask that you do not upload full manuscripts or excerpts from them to generative artificial intelligence tools for the purpose of preparing peer-review reports.
This request is based primarily on two reasons:
1. Quality and relevance of peer-review reports
Artificial intelligence (AI) tools may identify false errors or generate comments that do not correspond to the content of the scientific texts being evaluated, which may affect the quality of the review and result in unnecessary requests to authors. In this regard, we have identified recent reviews containing comments that request the inclusion or correction of aspects that are already adequately addressed in the manuscript; we have also identified comments that are unrelated to the content of the work under evaluation. Therefore, these tools cannot be considered infallible for the preparation of peer-review reports.
2. Confidentiality of the peer-review process
Manuscripts submitted for evaluation contain unpublished information and, in some cases, data that must remain strictly confidential throughout the editorial process. Therefore, full manuscripts, excerpts, tables, or figures from them must not be entered into AI tools.
Permitted use of AI during peer review
The only authorized use of AI tools is for linguistic assistance with comments drafted by the reviewer, for example, to improve their clarity, wording, or assertive tone, or to support translation when the review is conducted in a language other than the reviewer’s native language. In such cases, unpublished or confidential information, as well as excerpts from the manuscript, must not be included.
We also take this opportunity to thank you for ensuring that comments addressed to authors are clear, respectful, specific, and constructive, so that the requested changes can be understood precisely and contribute to improving the manuscript.
We once again thank you for your rigor and valuable contribution to the editorial process of Agronomía Mesoamericana.
Read more about Use of Artificial Intelligence Tools During Peer Review
