Create a Contributor Account

Every person who submits to AIC holds a contributor account: one verified identity, one record, one set of declarations that follows your work through the journal, the preprint server and the student section. This page explains why the account exists, what it requires, and what we do with the information.

Why an Account Is Required

Until January 2026 most preprint servers accepted an institutional email address as sufficient evidence that a submitter was a working researcher. arXiv stopped treating it that way, and every server that has not followed is now absorbing machine-generated submissions at a rate that buries the real work. An unauthenticated server drowns. That is the whole argument, and it is not a theoretical one.

A registered account does four things that an email address on a form cannot:

• It establishes that a person stands behind the submission. Named, verifiable, contactable, and answerable for what the manuscript claims.
• It carries endorsement status. Once you are endorsed, you are endorsed. You do not repeat the process on every submission.
• It holds your declarations. Competing interests, funding, ORCID, affiliation and consent are recorded once and confirmed rather than retyped.
• It gives us somewhere to attach a rate limit. Three submissions per author per day, which is generous for a human and useless to a script.

Who Needs to Register

The arXiv-Style Checks We Apply

Registration is screened the way a preprint server screens a first-time submitter, and for the same reason. We check five things.

These checks are about admissibility, and nothing in them assesses the quality of your research. An account is not an endorsement of anything you go on to submit, and a moderator or editor still reads every manuscript against the published criteria.

Endorsement

You are exempt from endorsement, and can submit as soon as your email is confirmed, if any of these applies:

• You have previously had a preprint announced on this server
• You have published a peer-reviewed article in AIC or any indexed journal
• You are a member in good standing of the Caribbean Artificial Intelligence Association
• You hold a doctorate, or are enrolled in a doctoral programme
• A co-author on your intended submission meets any of the above
• You are a secondary school, sixth form or undergraduate student using the student section

If none applies, name a proposed endorser on the form: a researcher or senior practitioner in your field who knows your work and can confirm it. If you do not know anyone to ask, write "please assign" and the moderation panel will find one. Endorsement is free, it is not a character reference, and it does not make the endorser responsible for your conclusions.

If You Are Under 18

Registration is open from age 13. If you are under 18, the form requires four additional things, each of which is required rather than optional:

1. A named responsible adult: a parent, legal guardian, teacher or school-appointed supervisor who takes responsibility for your participation.
2. That adult's own email address, which must be different from yours. We write to it and wait for a reply before the account is active.
3. Their relationship to you, stated plainly.
4. An explicit consent tick, confirming that the named adult has read what the journal does and consents to your taking part and to your work being published.

After that, three rules hold for as long as you are under 18. The journal writes to your named adult and copies you, never the other way round. We publish no more of your personal data than your name, your school and your country, and you can ask us to publish initials and country only. And we hold your data on the shortest retention clock in the journal. The safeguarding policy sets all of this out in full, and the data protection policy gives the legal basis, which is Article 8 of the UK and EU GDPR.

Nobody under 13 may register. If you are under 13 and have research you want read, your teacher or guardian can write to students@caribbeanaijournal.org on your behalf, and a person will answer.

What Happens After You Register

What We Do With Your Registration Data

Your registration is held to run the journal and for nothing else. In the language of the data protection and GDPR policy: the controller is the Caribbean Artificial Intelligence Association, the lawful basis is contract for the submission relationship and legitimate interests for integrity screening, and for anyone under 18 it is consent given by the named adult under Article 8.

• We never sell it, rent it, or hand it to a marketing platform. There is no list, because there is nothing to sell.
• We do not track you. This site sets no cookies, runs no analytics, and loads no third-party scripts.
• We publish only what you agree to publish: your name, affiliation, country and ORCID iD on work that is accepted.
• Registrations that never submit are deleted after 24 months. Accounts that do submit follow the retention schedule in the retention table.
• You can ask to see, correct, export or erase your record at any time, at dataprotection@caribbeanaijournal.org. We answer within one calendar month, and erasure of a registration that has not been used is unconditional.

The contributor account terms, adopted 22 June 2026, are the binding version of the above.