Ethical Considerations for the Use of Artificial Intelligence in Linguistics Journal Publishing: Combining Hybrid Thematic Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis

The immense potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in academic journal publishing has significantly impacted scholarly communication between stakeholders, leading to increased research into ethical considerations for AI use in academic publishing. Due to the contextual nature of ethics and the ontological base of language as its own object of inquiry, the conceptual framework and underlying ideologies of AI ethics in linguistics deserve attention. In this study, we address the call for these ethical considerations by combining a hybrid thematic analysis (HTA) of the ethical guidelines available on 144 Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) linguistics journals’ and 11 corresponding publishers’ websites as of 31 October 2025, and a critical discourse analysis (CDA) case study on Language Testing, a representative journal with self-developed AI ethical guidelines. Through the HTA, we identified seven themes: accountability, authorship, citation practices, copyright, long-term governance, human agency, and transparency. The role allocation of CDA demonstrated that the AI ethical guidelines independently established by the linguistics journal expand the scope of stakeholders to include the sources of research data and technology, covering the informed consent of research participants and the responsibilities of the AI tool operators. Moreover, AI tools are given a beneficialized role, suggesting a more technology-assisted-oriented perspective and reflecting deeper trust in AI’s involvement. Through the findings, our study contributes to the broader understanding of ethical governance in relation to AI usage in discipline-based communication, highlighting the need for a more dialogic and diverse framework to share responsibility among stakeholders to promote the ethical use of AI.