A researcher's playbook
Across this playbook, explore step-by-step guides, best practice frameworks, and copy and paste prompts, helping you learn how to use AI effectively in research while maintaining responsible human oversight. You're encouraged to revisit these pages frequently and consult Frontiers’ policies to ensure your practices remain aligned with evolving standards.
Learn how AI works, best practice for maintaining human accountability, and explore a library of prompt templates for advanced AI use in research.
AI can support your judgement, but it can’t replace it - humans remain accountable. The six principles in our BE WISE framework will help you to unlock high-impact AI use in research while maintaining responsible human oversight.
If you're new to using AI, read about the basics and learn how different AI tools work.
Learn how to extract more value from AI tools without compromising responsible oversight.
Explore guidance, frameworks, and suggested prompts tailored to support you at specific stages of your research process.
AI is already shaping the future of research. The question is not whether researchers will use it, but whether they will use it in ways that strengthen science.
Our whitepaper - Unlocking AI’s untapped potential: responsible innovation in research and publishing - revealed a global scientific community that is both enthusiastic and uncertain, eager to harness AI’s power, but lacking clear guardrails, shared standards, and practical tools to do so effectively and confidently.
This playbook is designed to move the research community from ad hoc experimentation to intentional, high-impact application. It combines innovation with oversight to ensure AI becomes a catalyst for rigor, transparency, and deeper scientific insight - not a shortcut around them.
We are committed to community engagement, so that this playbook remain practical, relevant, and usable across disciplines and contexts. Feedback from researchers helps us identify what’s working, what’s unclear, and what new AI use cases or risks need to be reflected.
AI technologies, governance standards, and community norms are evolving rapidly. These guides are living documents. They will be reviewed and revised at least annually, with a public changelog. We actively seek community feedback and suggestions.
Current version: 1.0
Published: April 2026
Next scheduled review: October 2026
This playbook supports the global research community when navigating the responsible use of artificial intelligence. To maximise its impact, we encourage institutions and educators to reuse this content and integrate it into their training programmes, educational materials, and policies.
This content may be shared and adapted for educational purposes as long as appropriate credit is given to Frontiers, a link to the original source is included, and any modifications are clearly indicated. This approach aligns with the principles of open knowledge sharing and supports the collective advancement of research integrity and best practice in AI use.
When reusing or adapting this material, please include the following attribution:
Suggested citation:
Frontiers. High-impact AI: a researcher's playbook. Available at: https://www.frontiersin.org/ai-playbook/home
For adapted materials:
Adapted from: Frontiers. High-impact AI: a researcher's playbook Available at: https://www.frontiersin.org/ai-playbook/home
Where possible, we also encourage users to retain a reference to the original playbook and show the nature of any changes made, to support transparency and traceability across implementations.
