Version 1 · 26 October 2026, adopted by the IAS Executive Board. This charter applies to every paper proposal, every application for the Raymond Vatier Prize and every publication under the auspices of the IAS. Acceptance of the charter is required on submission. This is an English translation: in case of discrepancy, the French version prevails.
Preamble
The Institut International de l’Audit Social et Sociétal embraces the requirement of integrity on which trust in scientific work is founded: reliability, honesty, respect and accountability. This charter follows the international standards of scholarly publishing: the Core Practices and the position of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) on authorship and AI tools (2023), the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (ALLEA, 2023), the recommendations of the STM international association of publishers on classifying uses of AI (2025), the French National Charter for Research Integrity (2015) and the Code of Conduct for Scientific Integrity of the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences (2021). It adopts the OECD definition of an artificial intelligence system.
Part I. Integrity of work
Article 1. Scope
The charter applies to paper proposals for IAS Universities, to applications for the Raymond Vatier Prize and to texts published under the auspices of the Institute (proceedings, collective volumes, special issues). It binds authors, applicants, reviewers, members of juries and committees, and the Institute itself.
Article 2. Originality
The work submitted is original. Any use of another person’s text, idea, data or figure is cited. Reuse of one’s own previously published work is disclosed. Simultaneous submission of the same text to another event or journal is declared. The IAS may use similarity detection software.
Article 3. Authorship and contributions
Only those who have made a substantial intellectual contribution, who approve the submitted version and who agree to be accountable for it are authors. Guest, honorary or ghost authorship is prohibited. For a text with several authors, each person’s contribution is described using the CRediT taxonomy. An ORCID identifier is recommended for each author. Any change to the list of authors after submission must be justified and approved by all.
Article 4. References
Authors have read every source they cite and checked that it supports their argument. Any manipulation of citations is prohibited, whether courtesy citations, unjustified self-citations or citation-swapping arrangements.
Article 5. Data and fieldwork
Data are collected and processed fairly, with the consent of the people concerned where required, in compliance with the GDPR and the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection, and where appropriate after the opinion of an ethics committee. Authors keep their data and materials and provide them to the committee on request, respecting the confidentiality owed to the people and organisations studied. An empirical text states where and on what terms its data can be accessed.
Article 6. Conflicts of interest and funding
Authors declare the funding they have received and any financial, professional or personal tie that might influence their work or how it is perceived.
Article 7. Intellectual property
Authors hold the necessary rights to the figures, tables and extracts they reproduce, or have obtained permission to use them.
Part II. Use of artificial intelligence
Article 8. Principles
An artificial intelligence tool cannot be an author or co-author: it cannot be accountable for a piece of work, declare a conflict of interest or agree to a transfer of rights. Authors are fully responsible for the whole of their text, including the parts produced with the help of AI, and check everything they keep from it. Before entrusting content to a tool, they make sure of the conditions under which the tool stores and reuses it.
Article 9. Uses allowed without declaration
Correction of spelling, grammar and punctuation, and technical aids used solely for accessibility.
Article 10. Uses allowed with declaration
Language improvement beyond simple correction; translation; help with structuring the text; literature search and synthesis; help with programming and analysis; explanatory diagrams; visualisation of the authors’ own data using reproducible methods. These uses are declared in two places: in the submission form, and in the text, in a section entitled “Declaration of the use of artificial intelligence” placed before the references, using the wording: “In preparing this work, the author or authors used [tool, version] in order to [purpose]. They then reviewed and edited the content and take full responsibility for it.” A figure produced or modified with AI says so in its caption. Where AI is used in the research method itself (coding, classification, corpus analysis), the methodology section specifies the tool, its version, its publisher, and the date and parameters of use; the instructions used are kept and provided to the committee on request.
Article 11. Prohibited uses
Having AI write substantial parts of the text without one’s own intellectual contribution; having it produce the analysis, argument or conclusions; fabricating or altering data, results, quotations or references; presenting a generated image as data or a field observation; entering personal or confidential data into an AI tool without guarantees about how it is stored and reused.
Part III. Review
Article 12. Reviewers and jury members
Reviewers and jury members keep the texts they assess confidential and respect the anonymity of double-blind review. They decline any assessment where they have a conflict of interest. They do not enter all or part of a text under review into a generative AI tool. They write their assessment and recommendation themselves: AI may neither produce a report nor propose a decision. They may only use a tool to format their own notes, without the text under review, and say so.
Article 13. Commitments of the Institute
Decisions to accept, reject and award prizes are taken by people, and reasons are given. The IAS does not base any decision solely on the result of an AI-generated text detector, whose reliability has not been established. It protects the confidentiality of the texts and assessments it receives.
Part IV. Misconduct, appeals and revision
Article 14. Misconduct
Any report is sent to the Scientific Council (scientifique@auditsocial.world), which investigates it drawing on COPE procedures and hears the author before any decision. Depending on the seriousness, the IAS may request a correction, set aside the contribution, publish a reasoned correction or retraction, withdraw an award and, in the event of serious misconduct, inform the author’s institution.
Article 15. Appeals
Authors may challenge a decision taken under the charter before the IAS Executive Board, within one month.
Article 16. Revision
As practices and editorial policies on AI are changing rapidly, the charter is reviewed every year by the Scientific Council. Each version is dated; the applicable version is the one in force on the date of submission.