Journal Information
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ISSN: 2160-0104
NANO's AI Statement:
17 June 2026
As AI technology continues to develop rapidly and unevenly, we realize that NANO cannot cover every aspect of research and writing; however, it is important to provide guidance on intellectual responsibilities for submitters, editors, and reviewers. Please note: this statement will continue to evolve.
NANO believes in transparency, honesty, academic integrity, originality, and trust. It is critically important for scholars to submit their own work rather than something generated by a program. That said, we realize that the backend of software may rely on AI technology, resulting in unintentional AI usage; therefore, we ask that each writing/research/fact-checking/spell-checking/proofreading tool used be listed in the submission form and after the works cited.*
INFORMATION FOR AUTHORS AND CO-AUTHORS:
AI tools may not be listed as an author or coauthor. NANO does not allow the use of AI tools to produce or create a submitted article (in full or in portion) via prompts. Authors may not use AI tools to produce or create images or data sets via prompts. Primary responsibility for research integrity, citation integrity, editing, fact-checking, and proofreading is with the human author. Authors and coauthors must take full moral and legal responsibility for all aspects of their submissions. NANO does not accept submissions that have been translated by AI tools. NANO editors maintain the right to seek additional documentation from authors about AI technology disclosures and research/writing integrity. In addition, NANO editors reserve the right to reject a submission at any point in the editorial process if an author does not adhere to this statement and shared intellectual responsibilities.
INFORMATION FOR EDITORS AND REVIEWERS:
NANO’s editorial process does not allow AI tools to evaluate submissions, review submissions, or produce summaries. Due to the confidentiality of NANO's double-anonymized review process, editors and reviewers may not upload any portion of submitted writing to an AI tool.
EXAMPLES OF DISALLOWED AI USAGE**:
-Paragraph writing/creation
-Paragraph rewriting
-Paragraph translation
-Full page writing/creation
-Full page editing
-Full page translation
-Article drafting
-Article summary creation
-Article abstract creation
-Restructuring an argument
-Reorganizing an article
-Gaining argument feedback, identifying logic gaps
-Notes into text conversion
-Works cited creation
-Creation of images, graphics, lists, and data sets
**Not a complete list
EXAMPLES OF ALLOWED AI USAGE (authors must disclose occurrences)***:
-Word improvement
-Fact-checking
-Spell-checking
-Grammar checking
-Sentence rephrasing (not more than 5% of article, ~250 words total)
-Single word translations
***Not a complete list
EXAMPLE DISCLOSURE STATEMENT:
"The authors acknowledge the use of Microsoft Word 365 and Grammarly (both accessed April 2026) to spell-check the article and works cited. Gemini (accessed June 2026) was used as an additional spell-check for source titles and source authors both in the article and works cited. Gemini was used to fact-check the date of Toni Morrison’s editorial career at Random House. Single sentence rephasing checked by ChatGPT (July 2026) and marked by blue text (17 sentences total, 210 words total). [author names and affiliation should go here]
QUESTIONS:
Direct questions to NANO editor: Sean Scanlan, [email protected]
Works Cited:
“Academic Integrity Policy—the City University of New York.” The City University of New York, 2024, www.cuny.edu/about/administration/offices/legal-affairs/policies-resources/academic-integrity-policy.
“Artificial Intelligence Policies: Artificial Intelligence Policy.” SAGE Journals Information, SAGE Publishing, 2026, https://www.sagepub.com/journals/publication-ethics-policies/artificial-intelligence-policy.
“COPE Position—Authorship and AI.” Committee on Publication Ethics, 2024, https://doi.org/10.24318/cCVRZBms.
“Journal Policies.” Journal of Graduate Librarianship, Digital Commons, 2024, https://dc.etsu.edu/jgl/policies.html.
Modern Language Association. “Beyond Citation: Describing AI Use in Your Work.” MLA Style Center, 13 Aug. 2025. https://style.mla.org/describing-ai-use/.
Modern Language Association. “How do I cite generative AI in MLA style?” MLA Style Center, 13 Aug. 2025. https://style.mla.org/citing-generative-ai-updated-revised/.
“Policy on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Research and Publishing.” Canadian Science Publishing, 2026, https://cdnsciencepub.com/about/policies/ai-policy#:~:text=The%20Canadian%20Science%20Publishing%20(CSP)%20AI%20policy,AI%20to%20improve%20the%20language%20of%20reviews.
“Tools Such as ChatGPT Threaten Transparent Science; Here Are Our Ground Rules for Their Use.” Nature, vol. 613, no. 7945, Jan. 2023, p. 612, doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00191-1.
“Using AI Tools in Your Research.” Wiley, August 2025, www.wiley.com/en-us/publish/article/ai-guidelines/.
*AI Tools Disclosure: the above works cited was checked for MLA style using ChatGPT (accessed 17 June 2026). Spell-check and grammar check using Microsoft Word 365. [Sean Scanlan, editor, NANO]
NANO's Mission:
The goal at NANO is to invigorate humanities discourse by publishing brief, peer-reviewed reports with a fast turnaround enabled by new technologies. We welcome original notes from all fields in the humanities, particularly literature, film, history, music, rhetoric, philosophy, art, and digital humanities. We also welcome views from other disciplines that include, but are not limited to: psychology, sociology, engineering, various fields of technology, the hard sciences, and business. Each issue focuses on a special topic designed to encourage new interpretations and new possibilities. We abjure jargon, pandering, and ad hominem responses. Our ethos is brevity, clarity, and elegance. We do not accept fiction or poetry; we do accept images, videos, and sound recordings used in the presentation of notes. NANO welcomes creative reflections, spirited debate, and cross-disciplinary dialogue.
NANO's Peer Review Process:
Published notes undergo a two-step review process. First, guest editors and the NANO editorial staff assess each submission. Second, submissions that pass this initial reading are sent to specialists for blind review. NANO's goal is to provide at least two detailed reports for each submission that reaches the anonymous review stage, thereby emphasizing scholarly conversation and exchange. Reviewed submissions receive one of three designations: Accept with Minor Revisions, Revise and Resubmit, and Reject. Before notes are published, guest editors, NANO's editorial team, and author(s) negotiate the revision process in order to ensure satisfaction for all parties involved.
NANO's Open Access Statement:
NANO is an Open Access journal, which means that the editors and contributors of this journal believe that the research, content, and scholarly conversation contained in this journal should be freely available to the public. Open Access is an online philosophy that fosters useful critique and creates a culture of sharing. The Budapest Open Access Initiative more fully explains NANO’s position: “By ‘open access’ to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.”
NANO's Archiving Statement:
NANO has been selected by the Library of Congress for long-term archiving and storage. More specifically, the Library of Congress Web Archive Collections will create a catalog record for NANO. In addition, the Library of Congress Web Archive Collections will link (from their catalog) to NANO's live (online) site as well as to the archived site that the Web Archive Collections will maintain. In July 2015, the Library of Congress Web Archive Collection began harvesting NANO; public access began in December 2018.
NANO's Citation Integrity Statement:
NANO believes that citation coercion, manipulation, and promotional self-citation are unethical practices that harm journals, authors, and the larger academy. Citation is important to the ways in which knowledge is shared, how it grows, and how it is interpreted and evaluated. Because citations affect careers and publication survival, it is crucial that NANO editors and authors communicate openly about citation questions or concerns during the entire publication process: submission, review, editing, pre-publication, and post-publication.
According to Committee on Publication Ethics’ (COPE) forum on citation manipulation, “excessive self-citation by a journal, whereby articles are found to contain references that do not contribute to the scholarly content of the article and have been included solely for the purpose of increasing citations, misrepresents the importance of the specific work and journal in which it appears and is thus a form of scientific misconduct. When practiced by editors, with the compliance of senior investigators, it not only contaminates the literature but also sends a message to younger investigators that unethical behaviour is acceptable.” NANO ’s editorial team agrees with COPE’s statement that “there can be many instances of legitimate reasons for self-citation.” As a general rule, NANO does not accept author self-citations except for cases where a citation itself is a requisite part of an argument or when a citation is necessary to substantiate an argument; an author’s publication on the same topic/field as their NANO submission is not grounds for inclusion in the Works Cited.
Questions, concerns, or complaints should be sent to the editor, Sean Scanlan, at [email protected].
NANO's Copyright and License Statement:
Authors of accepted texts assign to NANO the right to publish and distribute their work electronically, which includes web publication, archiving, and permanent electronic retrieval.
Authors retain their copyright interest in their work. However, after an author's text has appeared in NANO, they may republish their text in any manner they wish—electronic or print—so long as they clearly acknowledge NANO as its original site of publication.
Publications that appear on NANO accord with an Attribution—NonCommercial—ShareAlike 4.0 Creative Commons license. This means the following: a user must give the original author(s) credit; users may not use the work for commercial purposes; and users must allow future users the same Creative Commons license that NANO has granted. However, any of these conditions can be waived if users receive permission from the copyright holder.