AI-Use Policy

In short

• Your paper must be your own work. An AI tool can help in limited ways, and you must say how.
• You declare AI help on the submission form: you choose one of four answers and write a short note. Your declaration is shown on your published paper.
• No declaration is needed for spell-check, dictation, a screen reader or a reference manager. Help with wording, help with finding sources, and limited help with drafting are allowed if you declare them. A paper whose substance an AI wrote, sources you have not opened, invented data, and a false declaration are not allowed.
• You answer for every word, source and number in your paper, whatever suggested it.
• The desk keeps a drafting record: earlier versions of your draft, counts of how much you typed and deleted, how long the editor was open, and every time you pasted text in (when, how long the passage was, and the pasted words themselves, up to 2,000 characters of each). It does not record your keystrokes. You can see the record. Pasted passages are highlighted in your paper for you, for the students who read it and for the editor, and you can mark each one as a quote from a source or as your own text from your notes.
• The editor may ask you up to five written questions about your paper. There is no timer.
• Decisions rest on editorial judgment. We check every submission for copied text and for signs of AI-written text, with checks of our own that run on our own server (section 8.13). These checks are not perfect, so a person reviews anything they flag before we act. We make no claim that AI-written text can be detected. We do not use outside AI detectors, and we do not act on a detector score.
• We may decline, unpublish, or withdraw the record of a paper we cannot confirm is yours. We publish no reason and no accusation.
• Readers must never put someone's unpublished paper into an AI tool, and must write their own readings.

If this summary and the full text below ever differ, the full text governs.

1 What this policy covers

1.1 The papers this policy covers

This policy covers every paper sent to Tillyard Research, from the first draft at the desk to the published page, and every reading written about one. Section 15 says how it relates to other parts of the site.

1.2 Who "we" are

We and us mean Tillyard. The editor is the person who decides whether a paper is published; today that is the president.

1.3 How this policy fits with our other documents

The Author Agreement and Licence contains each author's promise that their AI-help declaration is complete and true. The Editorial Policy of Tillyard Research describes how papers are handled and what happens when there is a concern. The Reader Guidelines govern readers. The Privacy Notice governs what we keep and for how long. Where two documents cover the same point, the more specific one governs. Section 37.5 of the Terms of Use sets the order among all our documents, including the sections of those terms that prevail over every other document. On AI tools, the declaration and the drafting record, that is this policy.

1.4 Numbers that can change

Where this policy gives a number and says "currently", that number is a setting we can change. The number shown on the page when you act is the one that applies.

2 Words we use

Words that have one meaning in every one of our documents, such as member, visitor, staff, the editor, record item, hold, case and tip, are defined in Definitions. The words below are added for this document's own subject, or repeated from Definitions for convenience. If a repeated meaning ever differs, Definitions governs the meaning of the word.

• AI tool means software that produces or rewrites text, code, data, summaries or analysis in response to a request. It includes chat assistants, writing assistants that suggest or rewrite sentences, tools that answer a search with a written summary, code assistants, machine translation of whole passages, and paraphrasing tools.
• AI help means any use of an AI tool in making your paper, other than the uses in section 4.
• Declaration means your answer to the "AI help" question on the submission form, with its note.
• The desk means the writing area of Tillyard Research, where papers are drafted.
• Drafting record means what the desk keeps about how a draft was written (section 8).
• AI detector means any tool or service that claims to tell whether text was written by a person or by a machine.

3 The basic rule: your paper is your own work

3.1 What has to be yours

The question the paper asks, the research, the reasoning, the analysis and the conclusions are yours. The words are yours, apart from quotations you mark and credit.

3.2 You answer for all of it

If a tool introduces a mistake, an invented source, a wrong figure or someone else's sentence, it is your mistake once you submit. Check everything.

3.3 An AI tool cannot be an author

It cannot agree to the Author Agreement and Licence and cannot answer for the work. Do not list one on the byline or in the thanks as if it were a person.

3.4 An AI tool is not a source for a fact

If a tool tells you something, find where it comes from, read that, and cite that. The one exception is where the tool's output is itself what you are studying (section 14).

3.5 Help from people

The same spirit applies. A tutor, a writing center, a professor or a friend who comments on your draft has helped you, and you can thank them with their permission. Someone who writes your paper for you has not helped you; they have written it.

3.6 Why we ask

A published paper puts your name on a public page that says you wrote it, and your Record lets anyone you give the link to check that. Those words should be true.

4 Help that needs no declaration

4.1 The list

You do not need to declare:

1. spell-check and autocorrect, and checks that fix punctuation and simple slips of grammar without rewording a sentence;
2. dictation or other speech-to-text of your own spoken words;
3. a screen reader, magnification, word prediction or other assistive technology;
4. a reference manager or a citation formatter;
5. an ordinary search engine, a library catalog or a research database, used to find sources that you then read. If you relied on a written summary or answer that the search tool generated, that is AI help with sources (5.2);
6. a calculator, a spreadsheet or a statistics package that does what you tell it to;
7. a dictionary, a thesaurus, or a look-up of a single word in another language;
8. the desk's own tools: "Check my paper", the DOI look-up and the citation helper.

4.2 If you are unsure

Declare it. A truthful declaration of help that this policy allows is not, by itself, a reason to decline a paper.

5 Help that is allowed if you declare it

5.1 Wording

The ideas and the sentences began with you, and a tool helped you polish them. Examples: suggestions to shorten or clarify a sentence you wrote; a grammar tool that rewords; translating into English a draft you wrote in another language; a suggested title. The limits: the meaning stays yours, and you read and accept each change yourself.

5.2 Sources

A tool helped you find or understand material. Examples: asking for search terms, or for the names of studies on a topic; using a tool's summary to decide what to read; asking it to explain a concept or a method. The limits:

1. you opened and read every source you cite;
2. you checked every summary against the source itself;
3. you cite the source, not the tool;
4. you confirmed that each reference exists. AI tools invent references that look real.

5.3 Drafting

A tool produced text, structure, code or analysis that shaped the paper. Examples: an outline you worked from; a first pass at a passage that you then rewrote against your sources; a list of objections you went on to answer; code to clean or analyze your data. This is the kind of help the editor looks at most closely. The limits:

1. the question, the reasoning, the analysis and the conclusions are still your own work;
2. anything a tool generated is rewritten in your own words and checked, or else set out as a marked quotation and labeled as generated;
3. you can explain every part of the paper, including any code, without the tool;
4. the help is a small part of the whole. Where an AI tool's drafting makes up the substance of a paper, the paper is not your own work, and declaring it does not change that (6.1).

5.4 Data and code

If a tool helped write code, clean data or run an analysis, choose "drafting" on the form, describe the help in your note, and say what you did in your method section too. You must have tested the code and be able to reproduce the result.

5.5 Access needs

Assistive technology needs no declaration (4.1). If you rely on an AI tool for wording or drafting because of a disability, declare the kind of help as anyone else would. You never need to say why you used it, and the editor will not ask about disability or health.

5.6 Co-authors

The declaration covers the whole paper. The lead author asks each co-author what help they had, and the declaration reflects all of it.

6 What is not allowed

6.1 A paper that is not yours

Do not submit a paper whose analysis, argument or text was mostly produced by an AI tool. This holds whether or not you declare it.

6.2 Undeclared or misdescribed help

Do not leave out AI help that section 5 requires you to declare, and do not describe it as less than it was.

6.3 Sources you have not opened

Do not cite anything you have not read yourself. Do not submit a reference, a quotation or a page number that you have not checked against the source.

6.4 Invented data

Do not present generated or simulated data as data you gathered. Do not invent interviews, survey answers, participants or results. If a paper openly studies simulated data, label every piece of it as simulated.

6.5 Other people's material in AI tools

Do not put into an AI tool anything that is not yours to share: another person's unpublished work, a recording or transcript of an interview that contains personal details unless the person agreed, or material that belongs to a lab, a university or an employer. Putting text into a tool shares it with the company that runs the tool.

6.6 Disguising where text came from

Do not use a paraphrasing tool or any other method to hide that text was generated or copied. Do not retype generated text in order to change what the drafting record shows. Pasting from your own documents, dictating, and using the desk with scripts switched off are all ordinary and allowed.

6.7 Answers that are not yours

When the editor asks you a question about your paper, answer it yourself.

6.8 Copied text is still copied

If a tool gives you someone else's sentences and you use them without credit, that is plagiarism, whatever the tool told you.

6.9 Readers

Section 12 sets out the rules for readers.

7 The declaration

7.1 Where and when

At the Declare step of submission you answer the "AI help" question and write a note. Each co-author confirms the declaration when they approve the final text.

7.2 The four answers

The form's own labels may be worded a little differently; the form governs.

7.3 Which to choose

Choose the answer that reaches furthest. If you had help with wording and with drafting, choose "drafting". Then describe every kind of help in the note.

7.4 The note

Say which tool or tools you used, what you used them for, which parts of the paper they touched, and what you did with the result. A few sentences are enough (the form sets a maximum length). Leave out anything private: no health details and no personal information about anyone. Examples:

1. Wording: "I used a grammar assistant to check the whole paper and to suggest shorter versions of about ten sentences in sections 2 and 4. I wrote each sentence first and chose what to keep."
2. Sources: "I asked a chat assistant for studies on cold-chain losses in food banks. It named six. Two did not exist and I dropped them. I found the other four through my library, read them, and cite three."
3. Drafting: "I asked a chat assistant for an outline of the literature review and a first version of the background paragraph in section 1, which I rewrote against the sources. I also used it to write the script that cleans the survey data, and checked its output by hand on 20 rows."

7.5 It is public

If your paper is published, your answer and your note appear on its page under words such as "AI help, as the author declared it". Write the note knowing that anyone may read it.

7.6 It is your statement

The line on the page reports what you told us. It is not a finding by us, and we do not vouch for it.

7.7 If your answer changes

If you realize before a decision that your declaration is incomplete, tell the editor: in an answer to a question if one has been asked, or by writing to support@tillyard.org. If you use AI help while revising, say so in "What I changed". After publication, ask for a correction from the paper's page; a declaration can be corrected by a dated notice like any other error.

8 The drafting record

8.1 Why it exists

Nobody can tell from a finished text how it was written. A history of the drafting, which the author and the editor can both look at, is fairer than a guess. That is all the drafting record is for.

8.2 What the desk keeps

1. Versions. Copies of your draft as it stood at points in time: the first, some saved automatically as you work, any you save by hand, and the ones sent, revised and published. Each has its word count and the time it was saved. The number kept for a paper is capped (currently 30 while you are drafting), and when the cap is reached the quiet saves that sit closest to their neighbours go first.
2. Typing counts and the paste record. How many characters you typed and deleted, how many characters you pasted, and how many times you pasted. These are kept as running totals for the paper and with each version. For every paste the desk also keeps when it happened, how long the pasted passage was, and the pasted words, up to 2,000 characters of each, and it marks the passage in your text so it can be shown highlighted.
3. Active time. How long the editor was in use for the paper, in seconds.
4. Saves without scripts. How many saves were made while the page's scripts were not running, since the counts cannot be taken then.

8.3 What the desk does not keep

It does not record which keys you press or the timing of your typing, and it keeps no record of where you pasted from. When you paste into the desk it keeps the pasted words (up to 2,000 characters of each paste) and the size and time of the paste, and it looks at nothing else on your clipboard. It sees nothing outside the desk: no other tabs, applications or files, and no screen, camera or microphone. Nothing about your drafting is sent to an outside analytics or session-recording service.

8.4 The notice, and your agreement

The first time you open the desk, a page headed "Before you write here" tells you what is kept, who sees it and what we check, and asks you to agree. When that wording changes, you are asked again before the desk opens. If you choose not to agree, the desk does not open and nothing is kept. Papers for Tillyard Research are written at the desk, so you cannot submit one without agreeing.

8.5 Where you can see it

The status line under your draft shows the running totals as you work. A list beside the text shows each pasted passage. The History tab lists the kept versions with their counts and every paste, lets you restore a version, and lets you download your draft. Everything in the drafting record is meant to be visible to you. If you ever find that the editor can see something about your drafting that you cannot, tell us; we would treat that as a fault to fix.

8.6 Who else sees it

The editor, and any paid staff who help run Tillyard Research, see the drafting record when you submit. The students who read your paper see which passages were pasted in, highlighted in the text, what you said each one is, and what the checks found (section 8.13), with no name on any of it. Co-authors do not see it: the draft lives on the lead author's desk. Nothing from it is public, and a published paper shows no highlight. The companies that host the site store it for us, and the Privacy Notice says how legal demands are handled.

8.7 How it is used

As background, alongside the paper, the sources, the readers' checks and your declarations. No number in it decides anything. There is no threshold, and no decision about a paper is made automatically from typing counts, paste records or the checks in section 8.13.

8.8 Its limits

We state these because they are real. The record cannot show who wrote a piece of text. Text typed out from another screen looks like typing. A paper drafted in another application and pasted in looks like pasting, and so do quotations, your own notes, dictated text and a co-author's sections. A session with scripts switched off leaves fewer counts. So a record with a great deal of pasting says nothing by itself, and a record with a great deal of typing proves nothing either. The highlights show where words came from; whether that is a problem is for a person to judge.

8.9 If you draft somewhere else

That is fine and common. Keep your own earlier drafts and notes. They are the easiest way to answer a question about how the paper came to be, and you can mention in your note or in an answer that you drafted elsewhere.

8.10 On a shared computer

The desk saves your draft to our servers as you work. On a computer that other people use, sign out when you finish, so that the next person cannot open your desk.

8.11 How long it is kept

The Data Retention Schedule governs. As current settings: kept versions are thinned to eight when the paper is finally decided and deleted 90 days after that, except that the published version is kept for as long as the paper is published; the counts and the paste record stay with the manuscript's records for as long as those are kept, except that the pasted words are deleted with the draft history; a draft left untouched for 365 days is deleted, with its history, after a notice.

8.12 Your own copy

Your data export includes your drafts, their kept versions, the counts and your paste record.

8.13 The checks Tillyard runs

When a paper is sent, Tillyard runs its own checks on its own server, and no outside service takes part. They look for passages that match another paper or submission on the site, using fingerprints of the text of every paper that has been sent; for how the text was made, from the paste record, the typing counts and the history of saves (for example, a large share of pasted text, pasted passages that are still exactly as pasted, or a great deal of text that arrived with little typing); and for signs in the wording itself. The findings are shown to the readers of the paper and to the editor as sentences for them to weigh, and the author can see them too. These checks aren't perfect. A quotation that is marked and cited will match, careful formal writing can show signs, and a person can type out text from another screen. So a person reviews anything they flag before we act, and nothing is declined, removed or counted against anyone by the checks alone. The fingerprints and the report are deleted with the paper.

9 Sources and other checks

9.1 DOI look-ups

Each DOI in your source list is looked up in Crossref's public index, and the result is recorded: found, not found, or found with details that differ from what you typed.

9.2 Readers open sources

Each reader is given two of your sources, drawn by Tillyard, and types what they found when they opened them.

9.3 Section comparison

Your frozen sections are compared with papers in the library and with your own earlier papers that were not accepted, to find word-for-word matches.

9.4 A hand search

The editor may search the web by hand for a few distinctive sentences from your paper.

9.5 What we do not use

We do not send papers to an outside plagiarism service or to an AI detector.

9.6 Why sources matter most

A source that cannot be found, or that does not say what the paper says it does, is something a person can check and a decision can properly rest on. A feeling about how a paragraph reads is not.

10 Questions the editor may ask

10.1 When

The editor may ask questions about any paper. Being asked is not an accusation. Often it is how the editor comes to understand a paper well enough to decide.

10.2 How

Up to five questions, in writing, in a form on the site. Your answers are written in the same form. There is no timer and no call. If you do not answer within the time allowed (currently 14 days), the paper goes back to your desk as a draft and nothing is held against you.

10.3 The kinds of question

For example:

1. "In your own words, what does the term in section 2 mean, and why does it matter to your argument?"
2. "Why did you choose this method over the obvious alternative?"
3. "Where in source c3 is the figure you quote? Please give the page or the section."
4. "Walk me through how you got from the table in section 4 to the percentage in your conclusion."
5. "You declared help with drafting. Which passages did the tool draft first, and what did you change?"
6. "Was any of this written outside the desk? If so, where?"
7. "Which author wrote which sections?"
8. "What would you do differently if you ran this study again?"

The editor may ask you to paste a short excerpt of your notes or your data into an answer.

10.4 What the editor will not ask

The editor will not ask about your health, any disability, your first language or your immigration status. The editor will not ask you to join a call, share your screen, turn on a camera, install anything, or hand over a password. The editor will not ask you to run your paper through an AI detector.

10.5 How answers are used

Your answers are part of what the editor weighs. They are kept with the manuscript's records, are not shown to readers and are not public.

10.6 Answering honestly

If the honest answer is that you had more help than you declared, say so. You can correct your declaration (7.7), and the editor may take the correction into account in your favor.

11 How decisions are made

11.1 The whole picture

The editor decides on everything in front of them: the paper, its sources and what the checks and the readers found, the readers' scores and reasons, your declarations, the drafting record as background, and your answers to any questions. The decision is an editorial judgment about whether Tillyard Research should publish the paper. In the words the site itself uses: "We review submissions and may decline or remove content we believe is AI-generated, plagiarized or inaccurate. This is editorial judgment; we do not guarantee detection."

11.2 We make no claim that AI-written text can be detected

We cannot tell from a piece of text whether a person or a machine wrote it, and we do not claim to. Tools sold for that purpose have wrongly flagged human writing, and research has found that they do so more often for people writing in a second language. So:

1. we do not run papers through AI detectors, which this policy means as tools that claim to say whether a person or a machine wrote a text (the checks in section 8.13 look at how a paper was made and report signs for a person to weigh, and are not a verdict);
2. we do not act on a detector score, whether it comes from a member, a reader, a college or anyone else;
3. a report about a paper that rests only on a detector score is not grounds for any action.

11.3 What publication does not say

Publishing a paper is not a statement by us that it was written without AI help. The paper's page shows what the author declared, in the author's words, and says so.

11.4 What may happen

Before publication, a paper the editor cannot confirm is the author's own is not accepted. The letter says "Not accepted for publication" and gives notes against the rubric. It makes no accusation. After publication, the editor may correct the declaration by a dated notice, add an editor's note, or retract the paper, and the Record item for it may be withdrawn. Deliberately false declarations may also be dealt with under the Community Guidelines and the Reporting, Enforcement and Appeals Policy. The Editorial Policy of Tillyard Research describes each of these steps and the chance to answer that goes with them.

11.5 What does not happen

We publish no accusation and put no reason on a withdrawn or retracted paper's page. We do not make a practice of reporting authors to their colleges or to anyone else; the Editorial Policy of Tillyard Research says when a referral may be made.

11.6 If you disagree

An author whose paper was not accepted can appeal once with new information. Anything else can be raised through the dispute form at tillyard.org/dispute. Both are described in the Editorial Policy of Tillyard Research.

12 Readers and AI tools

12.1 Never put a paper into a tool

A reader must not paste, upload or type any part of an unpublished paper into an AI tool or any other outside service. It would share an author's unpublished work with another company, and it breaks the confidentiality that every reader agrees to.

12.2 Write your own reading

A reader's scores and reasons must be the reader's own judgment in their own words. A reader may run a spelling or grammar check on their own comments, so long as none of the paper's text goes into it.

12.3 No detectors and no accusations

A reader must not run a paper through an AI detector, and must not tell an author that their paper was written by AI. A reader who has a concern describes what they saw in the note for the editor.

12.4 Where the full rules are

The Reader Guidelines govern.

13 How Tillyard itself uses automated tools

13.1 Text-safety screening

Text sent to Tillyard Research, including papers and readings, passes through automated screening for safety. The screening uses a word list and may use outside classification services, which are named in the Privacy Notice. It can hold text so that a person looks at it. It does not ban anyone and it does not decide whether a paper is published.

13.2 No software decides a paper

No software scores, approves or declines a paper. The editor reads each paper and decides.

13.3 Unpublished manuscripts

Apart from the screening in 13.1, we do not put unpublished manuscripts into AI tools.

13.4 Letters

Decision letters begin from house templates and are finished by the editor.

13.5 Training

We do not use members' papers, drafts or readings to train AI systems, and we do not license them to anyone for that purpose. A published paper sits on a public page, and public pages can be read by automated crawlers that we do not control; the Author Agreement and Licence says more.

14 Mentioning AI in your paper

14.1 Where AI was part of your method

If a tool helped with your data or analysis, say so in the method section, as well as in your declaration.

14.2 Where AI output is what you are studying

If your paper is about AI tools and quotes what one produced, treat the output as a quotation: mark it, label it as generated, and give the tool, its version or the date, and the request that produced it.

14.3 Thanks

You may mention a tool in the thanks if you wish. That does not replace the declaration.

15 Other parts of the site

15.1 Pursuits

A track in Pursuits may set its own rule about AI tools in its published rules. Where it does not, the principles here apply to anything a member submits to be read or scored: it must be your own work, you declare the help you had, and you check everything.

15.2 Notes, threads and the shop

There is no declaration for messages and chat. The Community Guidelines apply to what you post, however it was written.

15.3 Your résumé

A résumé you build in The Workbench is yours. Whatever tools you use on it, what it says about you should be true.

Changes to this document

AI tools and the norms around them are changing quickly, and we expect to revise this policy as they do. When we revise it, we change the version number and the effective date at the top. The version in force when you submit a paper is the one that applies to that paper's declaration. Where a change is significant, we aim to tell members through the site before it takes effect.

Contact

• Questions about this policy or about a declaration: support@tillyard.org
• Accessibility, including the use of assistive technology at the desk: accessibility@tillyard.org
• To dispute or correct something, with or without an account: tillyard.org/dispute
• Legal notices: legal@tillyard.org, or by post to Tillyard, 10602 York Rd SW, Etna, Ohio 43062

Questions about this document

support@tillyard.org

Legal notices

legal@tillyard.org

By post

10602 York Rd SW, Etna, Ohio 43062

For anything else, see where to send what.

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