Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Therapeutic Recreation Journal and ATRA Annual in Therapeutic Recreation

2025-12-04

Effective with submissions on or after January 1, 2026

This guidance outlines how authors, editors, and reviewers should responsibly use artificial intelligence (AI) in the preparation, submission, and review of manuscripts for the Therapeutic Recreation Journal (TRJ) and the ATRA Annual in Therapeutic Recreation. It aligns with the American Psychological Association (APA) publications policy.

Disclosure

Artificial intelligence (AI) provides a host of exciting opportunities for authors to save time and enhance manuscripts.

AI tools that make suggestions to improve or enhance your own work, such as tools to improve language, grammar or structure, are considered assistive AI tools and do not require disclosure by authors, editors or reviewers.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that the content of their submission meets the required APA (current edition) standards of scientific and scholarly assessment, research and validation, and are created by the author.

The APA Publications and Communications Board has approved policies regarding the use of generative AI in scholarly materials. These policies will continue to develop as APA gains a better understanding of the effects of generative AI on scholarly publishing.

APA’s current policies on generative AI are:

  • When a generative AI model is used in the drafting of a manuscript for an APA publication, the use of AI must be disclosed in the methods section and cited.
  • AI cannot be named as an author on an APA scholarly publication.

APA policy states authors are responsible for the accuracy of any information in their article. This means that authors must verify any information and citations provided to them by an AI tool. Authors may use, but must disclose, AI tools for specific purposes such as data analysis.

Additionally, when information is entered into generative AI, the organization which runs the generative AI will likely have access to this data. Authors should be aware of this possibility and how it may impact the privacy of participants in their studies, as well as how it may impact their own privacy and intellectual property. For this reason, journal editors and reviewers may not enter materials from submitted manuscripts into generative AI as it would constitute a violation of the confidentiality of the peer review process.

Author Disclosure

Guiding principles for authors about what output to disclose from generative AI tools:

  • Authors need to be transparent, providing the necessary information for readers to understand how generative artificial intelligence (AI) was used during the research and manuscript drafting process. Disclose the use in the most relevant place in the manuscript, most likely the Introduction or Method sections. Cite the following:
  • The full name of the tool used (with version number).
  • How it was used.
  • The reason for use.
  • Authors need to maintain ethical approaches to using generative AI, including not entering confidential material into open generative AI tools, for example, research data or client notes that may make a participant/client identifiable.
  • Authors need to take responsibility for the information provided by generative AI tools, including verifying the information received via generative AI searches by reading original sources used in AI output.
  • Authors need to provide attribution to the generative AI tool in cases where the tool was used to generate ideas, content, analysis, code, or research elements. If you would provide attribution to a human contributor, you should provide attribution to a generative AI tool for a similar activity.
  • While submissions will not be rejected because of the disclosed use of generative AI, if the Editor(s) become aware Generative AI was inappropriately used in the preparation of a submission without disclosure, the Editor(s) reserve the right to reject the submission at any time during the publishing process. Inappropriate use of Generative AI includes the generation of incorrect text or content, plagiarism or inappropriate attribution to prior sources. 

Declarations Submission see Step 2 under  Submissions-Manuscript Submission Steps: Sagamore-Venture Journal Management System to complete and submit with manuscript.

References

APA https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/resources/publishing-tips/policy-generative-ai

Sage https://www.sagepub.com/journals/publication-ethics-policies/artificial-intelligence-policy

Taylor Francis https://taylorandfrancis.com/our-policies/ai-policy/

 

December 1, 2025: Approved by TRJ Editorial Board and ATRA Annual Co-Editors