Hunara: Journal of Ancient Iranian Arts and History

We understand that the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is growing rapidly and, in many areas, is inevitable. This presents opportunities as well as challenges, especially in our field of study. The contents of this page offer definitions for AI, and Generative AI. This guideline also clarifies our policy regarding any use of AI by the contributors who wish to submit their manuscript to Hunara: Journal of Ancient Iranian Arts and History.

Definition

An updated definition of AI put forth by OECD states that,

“An AI system is a machine-based system that, for explicit or implicit objectives, infers, from the input it receives, how to generate outputs such as predictions, content, recommendations, or decisions that can influence physical or virtual environments. Different AI systems vary in their levels of autonomy and adaptiveness after deployment.” (source)

OECD also highlights that, 

“Generative AI (GenAI) is a category of AI that can create new content such as text, images, videos and music. It gained global attention in 2022 with text-to-image generators and large language models (LLMs). While GenAI has the potential to revolutionise entire industries and society, it also poses critical challenges and considerations that policymakers must confront.” (source)

The STM’s “Recommendation for a Classification of AI Use in Academic Manuscript Preparation” categorizes 9 recommended classifications of AI activities. We encourage our contributors to consult this document for more information. (download)

Hunara’s Standpoint on Using AI

In regard to the definitions offered by OECD, the STM document, and taking into account Hunara’s policy and scope, we consider six major areas where AI could be potentially used:

• Comprehensive or partial data analysis
• Creating images
• Enhancing old images
• Generating texts from prompts
• Translation
• Language editing and polishing

For Authors

While such AI-generated outcomes can be interesting, we may not accept them as original contributions to Ancient Iranian Arts and History. Thus, we only accept the use of AI in:

• Polishing the Language:
• It is expected that in the process, words may be replaced and the word count may change slightly. However, no new text—such as conclusions, new ideas, or additional analysis—that is not in the original document should be added. In other words, the text must be the author’s (or authors’) original work including ideas, data analyses, conclusions, comparisons, etc.
• Translation:
• Translation from another living language into English is acceptable; however, the word count of the translated section must not exceed 8% of the entire manuscript’s length (excluding the bibliography).
• It is recommended that the author rework the translation to make sure the style of the translated passages does not greatly differ from the rest of the text.
• Translation from ancient languages (e.g., Avestan, Old Persian, Middle Persian, Elamite, Sogdian, Sanskrit, Greek, Roman, etc.) is not acceptable.
• Image Enhancement:
• AI tools may be used for enhancing the quality of old scanned or photographed images whose quality is not suitable for republication. However, the modified image must differ with the original one only in terms of quality.

While the aforementioned use of AI are acceptable, you must make sure that you are allowed to incorporate AI-generated materials into your work. Also, these uses should be kept to a minimum. Specifically, you should consult the "Terms of Use" and other relevant guidelines provided by the service you have used to make certain that your use of AI-modified texts and images does not infringe upon any copyrights. Writers will be responsible for checking such terms of use, and Hunara: Journal of Ancient Iranian Arts and History will accept no responsibility regarding any re-using of third party materials, either generated by AI or taken from another source.

While text editing may not require a specific note regarding using AI, such indications are required for any image enhancing. For texts, the necessity of providing such notes will depend on the service/tools, your extent of use, and the terms of use of the tools you have benefitted from. These notes may be provided as footnotes within the manuscript.

If you are permitted to use the AI-modified texts or images but required to mention any AI-use, please include the title of the website, program, application or any other tools defined as AI, and provide a link, if applicable.

If you use AI, please indicate the nature and extent of your use in the Author’s Statement Form.

Please note that we do not consider tools such as Grammarly as “AI-use” in this context. However, author(s) must ensure their license permits the inclusion of the edited texts in their work.

Any use other than what mentioned above (such as comprehensive or partial data analysis; creating images (unless it offers new, valuable insight into studies and its use does not infringe upon any copyrights), and generating texts (or human-AI co-authorship)) will lead to the rejection of your submission.

For Reviewers

The reviewers must not use AI in any form and in any stage of the review process.