Researchers and research students are ethically and legally responsible for their use of AI. To maintain academic integrity, you must attribute and acknowledge use of GenAI in your research and be fully transparent about how and when it was used.
If you have used GenAI to create content that you include in your work, you must reference this use as a source of information. Referencing is a standardised way of acknowledging sources such as books, articles, and websites to show that your work is based on credible evidence. GenAI must be cited if used as an information source. This is required in the same way as any other information you include in your work that comes from an external source.
For more information on citing GenAI according to reference style, see Declaring and referencing GenAI.
A thesis must represent your own original work. A thesis submitted for examination is assessed work, so the key principles of verifying all AI outputs and acknowledging when and how GenAI has been used apply, and you should be transparent with your supervisors about the tools you have used.
As outlined in Curtin’s Guidelines for the use of AI in research, if you have used GenAI as part of your thesis you:
An example disclosure statement that can be used in a thesis:
“This thesis has benefited from the use of Generative AI tools (specifically ChatGPT (GPT-5.5)) to improve the clarity, structure, and readability of certain sections. All substantive intellectual contributions, including the conception of ideas, research design, data analysis, and interpretation of findings, are entirely the author’s own.”
Academic publishers have policies that govern the use of GenAI in the publishing environment, covering authorship, disclosure/acknowledgements, peer reviewing and editing, and copyright. If you want to use GenAI and have your research published, you’ll need to familiarise yourself with these policies early on in your research project.
Many publishers are members of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). COPE’s current position is that AI tools cannot be granted authorship. See: COPE position - Authorship and AI (2024).
Almost all uses of GenAI in research publications must be disclosed. Publishers have their own guidelines for authors regarding disclosure of GenAI in a journal or book submission. You should always check the GenAI policy or Instructions for Authors document of the publisher or journal where you are submitting to understand where to put your disclosure and how to format it.
The Australian Research Council (ARC) and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) provide guidance on the use of GenAI by grant applicants and assessors:
For more information contact the Research Office at Curtin.