Artificial Intelligence Policies in Human Anatomy Journals: A Comparative Analysis and Recommendations

Professional organizations in human anatomy have not yet issued guidance on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in scholarship, leaving decisions about its permissibility to individual journals and publishers. To date, however, journal and publisher AI policies in the field of human anatomy have not been systematically examined. This study compares AI policies across human anatomy journals and their publishers. Fifty-two human anatomy journals were identified using the 2024 SCImago Journal Rank. Nine journals were excluded due to non-English-only publication or classification as book series, leaving 43 journals for analysis. Journal websites were manually reviewed for statements addressing AI use. For journals without a journal-specific AI policy, affiliated publisher websites were searched for relevant policies; if none were found, the journal's editor was contacted. Fifteen journals had journal-specific AI policies, and 20 journals were affiliated with publishers that maintained publicly available AI policies. All policies permitted AI use provided authors retained full responsibility for submitted content and disclosed AI involvement. Nineteen policies exempted disclosure when AI was used solely for editorial purposes, while 16 required disclosure of every AI use. There is no uniform guidance regarding AI use in human anatomy scholarship. We therefore propose three recommendations: (1) Human anatomy professional associations should develop and disseminate guidelines collaboratively. (2) Editors of human anatomy journals should establish uniform AI policies across journals. (3) Each journal's AI policy should be embedded within its author guidelines.