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(Last updated: Aug. 1, 2026)
Great Plains Research (GPR) is committed to a publishing process that is thorough, transparent, and fair to all participants. The following principles govern the conduct of editors, reviewers, and authors. This Statement sets the principles that govern the journal; GPR’s Submission Guidelines and Reviewer Guidelines operationalize them, and where a question of interpretation arises, this Statement controls.
Editorial Integrity
All editorial judgments are made by qualified human editors. No automated system will assess scholarly merit or determine publication outcomes. The Editor reserves the right to decline manuscripts that fall outside GPR’s mission or do not meet the journal’s ethical standards. Desk rejections will include a brief explanation.
Peer Review Process
GPR publishes on an annual cycle. Authors are invited to submit abstracts annually; those selected are invited to submit full manuscripts on the schedule published in GPR's Submission Guidelines. All manuscripts accepted for full review undergo double-anonymous peer review by a minimum of two qualified reviewers. Submissions are evaluated on clarity of purpose, contribution to regional knowledge, methodological transparency, and ethical practice.
Authors are notified of one of four decisions: accept, accept with minor revisions, revision required, or reject. Manuscripts accepted with minor revisions do not return to peer review; the Editor verifies that the specified changes have been made and the manuscript proceeds to publication. Manuscripts returned for revision undergo a second round of peer review. A manuscript that receives a rejection decision will not be reconsidered. Decisions to reject rest with the Editor and are final. Rejection most often reflects a manuscript's fit with GPR's mission and scope rather than a judgment of its quality. Appeals are limited to claims of factual error or procedural failure and should be directed to the Editor. Disagreement with reviewer or editorial judgment is not grounds for appeal. Where the claimed failure concerns the Editor's own conduct of the process, the appeal may be directed to the Director of the Center for Great Plains Studies. Accepted manuscripts are copyedited and published in collaboration with the University of Nebraska Press.
Confidentiality
Submitted manuscripts are treated as confidential intellectual property. Access is restricted to the Editor, any guest editor, the editorial assistant, and assigned peer reviewers. No manuscript content may be shared, cited, or discussed outside the editorial process, nor entered into a generative AI tool (see Artificial Intelligence and Generative Tools). Reviewers’ obligations of confidentiality do not expire when the review is submitted.
Conflicts of Interest
Editors and reviewers must disclose and recuse themselves when they have co-authored with submitting authors within the past five years, hold a current or recent mentorship relationship with submitting authors, or have a financial interest in the research or its outcomes. In selecting reviewers, the Editor screens for these conflicts, as well as shared departmental affiliation, against the authors' identities. Because peer review is double-anonymous, reviewers who cannot determine an author's identity must nonetheless reflect on what they can know, including whether they recognize the work from a preprint or presentation, suspect a close relationship with a likely author, or hold a financial or institutional interest in the topic, and must contact the Editor before proceeding if any such concern applies. Undisclosed conflicts will be investigated under the process described in Investigation and Correction.
When the Editor or a member of the editorial team submits to GPR, the submission is handled independently by a guest editor with no stake in the outcome. The Editor is recused from reviewer selection, correspondence, and the decision, and the handling editor's identity is recorded and disclosed with the published article.
Reviewer Conduct
Reviewers must accept invitations only when they have genuine expertise and sufficient time. Delegating a review, in whole or in part, including to graduate students, is not permitted without prior approval from the Editor. Reviewer feedback must be specific, constructive, and addressed to the work itself; hostile or ad hominem commentary is not acceptable. Reviewers must not request self-serving citations or use unpublished ideas encountered in review for their own work.
Author Responsibilities
By submitting to GPR, authors enter a scholarly pact with the journal, its reviewers, and its readership. Submitted work must be original and not under consideration elsewhere. Prior posting of a preprint, presentation at a conference, or inclusion in a thesis or dissertation does not constitute prior publication and does not disqualify a submission, provided it is disclosed in the Cover Document.
All sources must be cited accurately, including Indigenous knowledge systems and community-sourced data, and all substantive contributors credited, from research participants and community partners to funding sources. All listed authors must have contributed significantly, approved the final version, and agreed to submission.
Requests to add, remove, or reorder authors after submission must be made in writing to the Editor with a rationale and the written agreement of every listed author, including any author being removed. Authorship disputes are matters for the authors and their institutions to resolve; GPR will pause consideration or publication until agreement is documented.
Authors must disclose any conflicts of interest and any substantive use of AI or generative tools in the research or writing process. Research involving human participants, animal subjects, or Indigenous or marginalized communities requires documentation of institutional or community ethical approval.
Errors discovered after submission or publication must be reported to the Editor without delay.
Inclusive, Accessible, and Responsible Scholarship
GPR is committed to an inclusive, accessible, and responsible publishing environment that reflects the diverse voices, knowledges, and communities of the Great Plains. Authors and reviewers are expected to use identity-affirming and culturally respectful language, deferring to community-preferred terms and naming conventions when describing peoples, places, and histories. Scholarship should be written to reach a broad audience of scholars, practitioners, and community members, and all figures must meet the journal’s accessibility requirements, including alt text. Research conducted with communities must proceed with reciprocity and care: knowledge must not be extracted without meaningful engagement, attribution, and tangible benefit to the communities involved, and community collaborators, artists, and interdisciplinary partners must be credited appropriately, whether as co-authors or in acknowledgments.
Data Availability
GPR expects authors to make the data underlying their findings as available as ethics and governance allow. Community data governance controls: where data are held under an Indigenous community's protocols or a community partnership agreement, the terms of that governance determine what is shared, with whom, and how, and a statement to that effect satisfies the journal's expectation in full. For all other data, authors should state where the data reside and how they may be accessed, or explain why access is restricted.
Artificial Intelligence and Generative Tools
GPR welcomes the responsible use of AI and generative tools in the research process, provided that use is balanced with essential human oversight and fully disclosed. Transparency regarding AI use strengthens the integrity of the scholarly record, and the disclosure of AI use, in itself, is never a basis for rejection: manuscripts are evaluated on their quality, integrity, and transparency, and disclosure exists to inform that judgment, not to penalize the responsible use of these tools. These standards apply to authors, reviewers, and editors alike.
Because standards for AI in research are evolving quickly, GPR reviews these provisions periodically. GPR’s standards for generative AI were developed with expert review from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s PRAIRIE initiative (Pioneering Responsible AI for Research, Innovation, and Education).
The provisions below set out the responsibilities of authors, reviewers, and editors, followed by standards that apply across all three roles: images and data visualizations, Indigenous knowledge and community-sourced data, the use of AI-detection tools, and the treatment of published content in AI training.
By role
Authors
AI tools serve as assistants to human expertise; they do not meet the criteria for authorship and cannot bear legal responsibility for published work. Authors remain the primary stewards of their research and are responsible for verifying all facts, citations, and data regardless of how they were produced. Where an AI method is integral to the research itself, as an instrument of data collection, analysis, or modeling, it must be described in the Methods in sufficient detail to be reproducible.
All manuscripts must include a Statement on the Use of Generative AI, submitted in the confidential Cover Document, reviewed by the editorial team and not shared with peer reviewers during review. The statement is required of every submission and addresses substantive use as defined below: authors whose work involved no substantive AI use state so directly. Upon acceptance, the statement is published with the article, so that the disclosure becomes part of the scholarly record it exists to strengthen. Where AI use was substantive, the statement must account for the tools used and how they were used. Statements are retained by the editorial team for one year from the date of submission. Disclosure categories, the level of detail required, and compliant and non-compliant examples are set out in GPR’s Author Submission Guidelines.
For the purpose of this policy, “substantive” AI use means use that generates or materially shapes content, analysis, data, or figures. Routine assistance that introduces no new content, such as basic spelling, grammar, and punctuation correction, reference formatting, and translation for the author’s own comprehension, does not require disclosure, though authors remain fully responsible for the final text. Translation of the author’s own completed manuscript for submission is a substantive use and must be disclosed, and it is a use GPR expressly welcomes: disclosure of translation assistance will never disadvantage a submission, and it exists so the editorial team can support authors writing across languages.
Authors are responsible for ensuring that any AI tools used adequately protect the confidentiality of unpublished manuscript content and research data. Submitting sensitive data to tools whose terms permit public sharing of, or training on, user inputs is prohibited. Where a specific, credible concern about the integrity or originality of a work arises, the editorial team may ask an author to document how the work was produced; authors are therefore expected to retain drafts, data, and working notes sufficient to demonstrate the provenance of their work until at least one year after publication.
Reviewers
Peer review is an act of expert human judgment. Reviewers must not upload any portion of a submitted manuscript to a generative AI tool, nor use AI to generate, summarize, or assess the manuscript on their behalf. Reviewers may use AI tools to improve the clarity or grammar of their written feedback, provided the substance and judgments are entirely their own and the text submitted to the tool contains no quoted or closely paraphrased manuscript content. Any such use must be disclosed to the editorial team on submission of the review, noting the tool name, version, and how it was used. Reviews found to have been generated or substantially shaped by AI will be disqualified. Undisclosed or prohibited use of AI in the review process violates GPR’s confidentiality and integrity standards and will be investigated under GPR’s misconduct procedures. For full guidance, including disclosure requirements and permissible uses, see GPR’s Reviewer Guidelines.
Editors
Editorial judgment is a human responsibility and is never delegated to an automated system. Every editorial decision rests on human assessment. Manuscripts and confidential peer-review materials are not entered into generative AI tools. Where AI tools support the journal's editorial infrastructure and administration, they are used in ways that do not expose confidential submission content. Editors will not use AI-detection software as a basis for editorial decisions (see AI-Assisted Detection). Any substantive use of AI in the editorial process is applied consistently and disclosed to authors on request.
Across all roles
Images, Figures, and Data Visualizations
As a journal dedicated to the specific geography and cultures of the Great Plains, GPR prioritizes primary, authentic documentation; the archival value and geographic accuracy of its regional record depend on it. Generative AI may be used to create or assist with figures only when that use is clearly disclosed and labeled, accompanied by a brief account of how the tool was used and why it was appropriate, and the accuracy of the underlying data is affirmed. Generative AI must never be used to fabricate, embellish, or manipulate research data, or to alter photographs, maps, or images in ways that would misrepresent the regional record.
Indigenous Knowledge and Community-Sourced Data
GPR’s commitment to Indigenous knowledge systems and community-sourced data extends to the use of AI. Authors, reviewers, and editors must not enter Indigenous knowledge, traditional knowledge, oral histories, community-sourced data, or culturally restricted materials into any public or commercial generative AI tool. Doing so is an irreversible act of extraction that removes the originating community’s ability to grant or withhold consent over how its knowledge is used and reused. Research drawing on such materials must document the free, prior, and informed consent of the community involved and follow that community’s own governance protocols, consistent with the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance and Article 31 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
AI-Assisted Detection
GPR does not treat the output of AI-detection software as evidence of misconduct. Such tools are unreliable and are known to disproportionately misclassify the writing of authors who are not native English speakers and of authors with distinctive styles. Where a concern about undisclosed AI use arises, it is handled through the process described under Investigation and Correction, with the author given a full and documented opportunity to respond before any adverse decision is made.
Published Content and AI Training
GPR's responsibilities for AI do not end at publication. GPR holds that content a community has designated as culturally restricted, or that was published under a community's data-governance protocols, should not be licensed for AI training without the documented consent of the community involved. GPR will advocate for this protection, and for the disclosure of any AI-training licensing to authors, with the Center for Great Plains Studies and the University of Nebraska Press. Because copyright is held by the Center and publication rights are managed by the Press, authors with questions about how their published work may be licensed or used, including for AI training, should direct them to the University of Nebraska Press (see Copyright and Permissions).
Investigation and Correction
GPR will promptly and impartially investigate any credible allegation of misconduct, including fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, undisclosed conflicts, or undisclosed use of artificial intelligence. The process includes: acknowledgment within ten business days; preliminary review by the Editor; notification to the relevant author(s) with opportunity to respond; and resolution through correction, retraction, or editorial notice. Corrections, retractions, and editorial notices are made openly, with a visible public record; investigations that find no fault are closed confidentially, and the journal keeps no public record of unsubstantiated allegations. An author may request that an adverse finding be reviewed by the Director of the Center for Great Plains Studies.
Where an error originates in undisclosed or unverified AI use, such as a fabricated citation or an unsupported data point, GPR corrects the published record when the error is peripheral to the article's conclusions and retracts when fabricated references or data are central to them. Authors are responsible for verifying every citation and data point regardless of how it was produced. The journal does not alter the published record silently.
Reporting Concerns
These principles apply to GPR's own conduct as much as to authors and reviewers. Substantive scholarly concerns or responses regarding published articles may be directed to the Editor, who will share them with the article's authors and, where they identify a possible error, handle them under Investigation and Correction. Concerns about the journal's adherence to its commitments may be directed to the Editor at gpr@unl.edu or the Director of the Center for Great Plains Studies at cgps@unl.edu.
Copyright and Permissions
Copyright of content published in GPR is held by the Center for Great Plains Studies. The University of Nebraska Press manages rights associated with published content. Permission to reprint or reproduce material from GPR may be requested at https://nebraskapressjournals.unl.edu/permissions/.
Publication Fees
GPR charges no submission, publication, or page fees. There are no article processing charges of any kind.