European Science Editing 52: e186943, doi: 10.3897/ese.2026.e186943
The invisible editor: operationalizing ‘meaningful human oversight’ in artificial intelligence–mediated workflows
Syed Mohamad Shajahan SM‡‡ Lush Transnational Pvt Ltd., Chennai, India
Academic editor: Charlotte Rowbottom © Syed Mohamad Shajahan SM. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Citation:
Shajahan SM (2026) The invisible editor: operationalizing ‘meaningful human oversight’ in artificial intelligence–mediated workflows. European Science Editing 52: e186943. https://doi.org/10.3897/ese.2026.e186943 |  |
Abstract
Scholarly publishing is undergoing a significant structural transition: progressive del-egation of editorial judgement to algorithmic systems. While the debate has focused on authors’ use of generative artificial intelligence (AI), the undisclosed use of AI by editorial intermediaries – specifically in the copyediting and peer review triage stages – has received less attention. This Viewpoint presents that opaque editorial AI use risks ‘semantic drift,’ a condition in which algorithmic processing compromises the epistemic integrity of the scientific record. In response, the integrated transparency protocol is proposed, a risk-based disclosure framework that operationalizes mean-ingful human oversight to ensure editorial responsibility remains with humans.
Keywords
Algorithmic transparency, editorial accountability, generative artificial intelligence, meaningful human oversight, scholarly publishing ethics, semantic drift