VALENCE: Seven Rules for Responsible AI Use

How to read VALENCE

V — Verify

Verify facts, names, formulas, units, numbers, references, data, and conclusions. A convincing statement proposed by AI is not evidence.

A — Acknowledge

Openly disclose material use of AI — especially when it helped create, translate, edit, structure, or analyze text.

L — Limit

Use AI where its performance can be checked: language, structure, drafting, identifying possible errors, and preliminary organization of information. Do not delegate scientific judgment to a machine in place of a specialist.

E — Edit

A draft produced with AI assistance must undergo full authorial revision. The final text must reflect real data, reasoning, knowledge, and the researcher’s own scientific position.

N — No AI authorship

AI, a chatbot, a language model, or a software service cannot be an author or co-author of a scientific work: it cannot accept responsibility, confirm a contribution, or be accountable for errors.

C — Cite & protect

Cite primary sources, avoid plagiarism, verify rights to use materials, and protect data confidentiality. Use reliable services with clear terms for information processing.

E — Ensure standards

Maintain accuracy, clarity, originality, reliability, reproducibility, ethical integrity, and compliance with the requirements of the target journal and your scientific field.

What VALENCE allows

• language and stylistic editing, translation, and shortening of text;

• drafting alternative titles, abstracts, structures, and transitions between sections;

• formulating self-check questions and identifying unclear passages in a manuscript;

• preliminary organization of the literature and preparation of working summaries — with mandatory verification of the primary sources;

• other auxiliary tasks, provided the researcher understands the tool’s limitations and verifies the output.

What VALENCE does not allow

• generating non-existent data, experiments, observations, or references and presenting them as scientific results;

• accepting a machine interpretation of data as a scientific conclusion without specialist verification;

• concealing material use of AI when the journal or institution requires disclosure;

• shifting responsibility for errors, plagiarism, rights violations, or unreliable conclusions onto AI;

• uploading confidential or unpublished materials to external services without checking security terms and institutional policy.

Why these rules apply beyond chemistry

VALENCE emerged from the editorial practice of chemistry journals, but its seven principles do not depend on a particular research object. Scientists in every field need fact checking, transparency about tool use, protection of sources, and preservation of human responsibility.

At the same time, different fields of science should supplement VALENCE with discipline-specific requirements. VALENCE is therefore a foundational layer of governance that can be adapted to the professional standards of each discipline.