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To find out who funded an AI safety study and what its authors could gain, start with the paper’s own disclosure statements, then check them against a funder’s award record, a funder registry entry, and the authors’ institutional pages. The paper tells you what its authors reported. Outside records tell you whether that report can be corroborated.
A disclosure is evidence of a relationship or of support. It is not, on its own, evidence that the findings are wrong or biased. This guide gives a method rather than a verdict on any one paper, since no particular study is named here. Apply the steps below to the paper you are reading.
Where the disclosures sit in a published paper
Disclosures are rarely in one place. Journals split them across several sections, and a statement that looks complete in one location may be shortened or absent in another. Start by listing every location you can find.
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|---|---|---|
| Funding statement | Named sponsors, grant or award numbers, and sometimes the role each sponsor played | General institutional support, unlisted sponsors, or wording that varies by journal |
| Competing-interest or conflict statement | Financial and relevant non-financial relationships that the authors declared | Interests the authors did not consider relevant, and the depth of detail the journal requires |
| Acknowledgements | People, labs, or organisations that helped, sometimes including data or computing providers | Whether a helper was a funder; acknowledgement and funding are different categories |
| Author note or affiliation footnote | Current employer, and sometimes a change of affiliation during the work | Secondary affiliations or consulting roles |
| Supplementary files and linked disclosure forms | Full per-author declarations and extended sponsor details | Whether the files are public; check whether the journal posts them |
How to check the record, step by step
1. Pin down the version and venue
- Record the title, author list, publication date, journal or conference, and the DOI or stable link.
- Check whether you are reading a preprint or a peer-reviewed version. Disclosure text can differ between them, so cite the statement from the version you are discussing.
- Use the published version’s statement when both exist, and note the version you checked.
2. Read every disclosure location
The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) says author disclosures should cover relationships and activities that might bias the work, or be seen to bias it. The American Psychological Association (APA) asks authors to disclose interests that could be perceived as conflicts even where the authors do not believe those interests affect the work. Read the paper against both standards, then against the policy of the specific journal. ICMJE recommendations on author disclosures and APA publishing policies set out these expectations.
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3. Separate direct funding from general support
ICMJE says a funding statement should describe direct support for the work and distinguish it from general institutional support. A line such as “funded by” a university may mean that the university paid an author’s salary time, not that it paid for the project itself. Record each sponsor by its exact name, along with any grant or award number the paper gives.
4. Ask what the sponsor could control
Look for statements about the sponsor’s role in five stages: study design; data collection, analysis, and interpretation; writing; access to data; and the decision to submit for publication. Elsevier’s publishing ethics policy asks that the sponsor’s role be disclosed across those stages. ICMJE says authors should avoid agreements that interfere with access to data, independent analysis, manuscript preparation, or publication. If a paper says nothing about a sponsor’s role, write “the paper does not say” rather than assuming either outcome.
5. Check the author’s documented interests
Search the disclosures for employment, consulting, stock or options, honoraria, patents, paid expert testimony, grants, and other financial relationships. Also note non-financial interests where they are documented, such as institutional ties, academic rivalry, personal relationships, or a long-standing commitment to a position. Report what is documented and explain why it bears on the topic.
6. Cross-check names and award numbers
Crossref’s Open Funder Registry supports matching by funder name and funder identifier, and it lets you search publications whose metadata includes funding information. Where a grant number is given, check it against the funder’s own award record if one is public. Crossref’s guidance on funding data deposits explains how that metadata is supplied, which helps you judge how complete a record is. The registry is a corroboration tool: a missing match can reflect ambiguous names, missing identifiers, or incomplete deposits, so treat it as inconclusive.
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7. Verify author identity and affiliation
Compare the affiliations printed on the paper with the authors’ institutional biographies or official staff pages, especially where a relationship is material. Automated author profiles in OpenAlex can help you locate publications, but they are discovery aids, not final records. Profile algorithms can merge researchers with similar names or keep an outdated affiliation. The OpenAlex author-profile guidance explains how profiles are built and how to request corrections.
8. Look for public institutional records
Government bodies sometimes publish grant information, collaboration details, or freedom-of-information releases. In the United Kingdom, the AI Security Institute, which is part of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, publishes information about its AI safety and security grant programmes on its grants page. When that page was accessed on 4 October 2026, it stated that the programmes were not then accepting applications. The UK government’s AI Safety Institute organisation page links transparency releases, including an October 2024 freedom-of-information release about declarations of interest. These pages show the kinds of public record that exist. They do not show that any particular paper was funded by either body.
9. Label what you found and what you inferred
- Use phrasing that matches the source: “the paper reports,” “the award record lists,” or “the author’s institutional biography says.”
- Mark any incentive you consider plausible as an inference, and state the evidence behind it.
- If disclosures are absent or incomplete, say they were not found in the versions and records you checked. Do not convert that absence into a claim that no relationships exist.
What authors may gain, and how to describe it
The interests worth checking fall into a few categories:
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- Salary or employment support, including sponsored time on a project
- Consulting fees and honoraria
- Equity, stock, or options in a company
- Patents or licensing interests
- Paid expert testimony
- Research grants held personally or through an institution
- Institutional or professional standing that depends on a particular conclusion
Describe each relationship, state how it connects to the topic of the paper, and give readers the detail they need to judge its relevance. ICMJE notes the distinction directly:
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.“Although the presence of a relationship or activity does not always indicate a problematic influence on a paper’s content, perceptions of conflict may erode trust in science as much as actual conflicts of interest.”
International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, “Author Responsibilities: Disclosure of Financial and Non-Financial Relationships and Activities, and Conflicts of Interest.” ICMJE
When the records disagree or come up empty
- The paper names a funder that the registry does not return. Try name variants, parent organisations, and the grant number, then check the funder’s own award pages.
- The registry lists a grant the paper does not mention. Record the discrepancy as a discrepancy. Check the journal’s disclosure form and, if the question is material, contact the corresponding author or the journal.
- An author profile shows an affiliation the paper does not. Compare the dates of the paper with the dates on the profile, and check the institutional page directly.
- No competing-interest statement appears in the version you checked. Check the other versions and the supplementary files before drawing a conclusion.
- A paper gives a sponsor but no role. Report that the role is not stated, and do not fill the gap with an assumption.
Comparing two AI safety studies on the same axes
When you compare two papers, record the same six points for each. A disclosed relationship is a fact to report, not a grade for the paper’s quality.
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|---|---|
| 1. Named funder and award | Sponsor names, grant or award numbers, and whether the award record is public |
| 2. Type of support | Direct project funding, or general institutional support for an author’s time |
| 3. Sponsor role and publication independence | Whether the paper states the sponsor’s role in design, data, analysis, writing, access, and submission |
| 4. Author interests | Financial and relevant non-financial interests, as declared in the paper or linked forms |
| 5. Completeness under the venue’s policy | Whether the statement meets the target journal’s current requirements, which may differ from ICMJE or APA guidance |
| 6. Corroboration and metadata provenance | Whether the registry, the award record, and the author’s institutional page agree, and where each record came from |
Which rules govern a paper’s disclosure statement
ICMJE’s recommendations are cross-disciplinary guidance used by its member journals and encouraged for adoption by others. APA and Elsevier publish their own policies. The target journal’s current rules decide the exact wording and location of required statements, so check the journal’s author guidelines alongside the standards cited above.
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