OECD AI Principles

The OECD AI Principles are a set of intergovernmental standards for trustworthy artificial intelligence, adopted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Council at Ministerial level in May 2019 and updated in May 2024. They were the first AI principles endorsed at the intergovernmental level and were later reflected in the G20 AI Principles. As of the 2024 update, 47 countries and jurisdictions adhere to them, including every OECD member state, the European Union, and a number of non-member adherents (source: OECD, AI principles and OECD.AI, AI Principles overview).

The five values-based principles

1. Inclusive growth, sustainable development and well-being — AI should benefit people and the planet.
2. Human rights and democratic values, including fairness and privacy — AI actors should respect the rule of law, human rights, and democratic values throughout the AI system lifecycle.
3. Transparency and explainability — AI actors should provide meaningful information appropriate to the context, enabling those affected to understand and, where appropriate, challenge outcomes.
4. Robustness, security and safety — AI systems should function appropriately and not pose unreasonable safety risk throughout their lifecycle.
5. Accountability — AI actors should be accountable for the proper functioning of AI systems, in line with the other four principles.

The five recommendations for policymakers

1. Investing in AI research and development.
2. Fostering an inclusive AI-enabling ecosystem.
3. Shaping an enabling, interoperable governance and policy environment for AI.
4. Building human capacity and preparing for labour-market transition.
5. International co-operation for trustworthy AI.

The 2024 update

The May 2024 revision responded directly to the emergence of general-purpose and generative AI. It expanded the human-centred-values principle to address AI-amplified misinformation and disinformation while respecting freedom of expression, and sharpened language on privacy, intellectual property, and safety in light of generative-AI-specific risks (source: OECD press release, May 2024).

Why this differs from the EU AI Act

The OECD AI Principles are voluntary, non-binding policy guidance adopted by governments — they set a shared normative baseline and inform national AI strategies, but they create no legal obligations of their own and no enforcement mechanism. The EU AI Act is binding EU law with defined obligations, exemptions (including specific carve-outs relevant to research), and penalties. In practice the two are closely related: the EU AI Act’s own risk-based, human-rights-oriented framing draws on the same normative ground the OECD Principles established in 2019. A research organization operating in the EU needs to track AI Act compliance as a legal matter; the OECD Principles are useful as the broader governance vocabulary and as the operative standard where no binding law yet applies (most jurisdictions outside the EU).

How research organizations apply the Principles

The OECD Principles are not sector-specific, but research institutions, funders, and research-performing organizations increasingly use them as a reference point for institutional AI-governance policy, alongside more technical frameworks like the NIST AI Risk Management Framework and ISO/IEC 42001. Concretely, this typically means: documented accountability for AI systems used in research workflows (from AI-assisted literature review to AI-assisted data analysis); disclosure to affected parties (co-authors, reviewers, study participants, research subjects) when AI materially shaped a research output or decision; and testing/validation proportionate to the AI system’s role, rather than a single blanket sign-off. See also Responsible AI and Trustworthy AI for the related concepts these Principles operationalize, and Generative-AI disclosure statement for the specific mechanism most journals and funders now use to satisfy the transparency principle at the point of publication or proposal submission.

Sources

• OECD — AI principles
• OECD.AI — AI Principles overview
• OECD press release, 8 May 2024 — OECD updates AI Principles

Frequently Asked Questions

What does “co-editor-in-chief” mean?

Co-editor-in-chief describes an editorial structure in which two or more people jointly hold the editor-in-chief role for a journal, sharing final editorial authority rather than one person holding it alone. It differs from the more common single-editor-in-chief structure, where one person holds overall responsibility and delegates day-to-day manuscript handling downward to associate and section editors.

Is a co-editor-in-chief the same as a co-chief editor or deputy editor?

Not necessarily. Some journals use “co-chief editor” for a senior deputy who assists the editor-in-chief with policy formulation and high-level manuscript decisions without holding fully independent, co-equal authority, while “co-editor-in-chief” more often, though not always, implies co-equal partners who each carry full sign-off authority. Because usage is inconsistent across publishers, the title alone does not settle which arrangement a given journal has.

Do co-editors-in-chief have equal authority with each other?

Not always. Some journals genuinely split the role into co-equal partners who can each act as final decision-maker within their share of the work, while others use the title for a senior deputy assisting a more senior editor-in-chief without full co-equal authority. The operative question for any given journal is what its editorial policy or masthead documentation says about who can independently make a final accept/reject call.

How is a co-editor-in-chief different from an associate editor?

A co-editor-in-chief holds, or can exercise, top-level authority: setting or co-setting editorial policy, having final say on contested decisions, and serving as an escalation point for ethics cases and appeals. An associate editor, handling editor, or section editor carries delegated decision-making over specific submissions but reports upward to an editor-in-chief, or co-editors-in-chief, who retains ultimate authority.

Why do journals appoint co-editors-in-chief instead of a single editor-in-chief?

Common reasons include distributing an unsustainable workload on high-volume or broad-scope journals, giving complementary subject-area or methodological expertise final-decision oversight, providing continuity during an editor-in-chief transition, and reflecting shared governance when a journal is co-published or co-sponsored by more than one institution.

How do I find out whether a specific journal’s co-editors-in-chief have independent authority?

Check that journal’s own editorial policy, about page, or masthead rather than assuming the title implies co-equal authority by default, since usage varies across publishers. Documentation of a journal’s editorial independence and editorial board composition will typically clarify whether co-editors-in-chief have independent sign-off authority split by defined scope, or operate as a joint deputy arrangement under one senior editor.