Our research environment

A careful consideration of these initial questions will help you to assess the benefits and risks of using GenAI in your studies: 

• Do you need to use GenAI, or would an alternative tool provide similar results?
• How could the use of GenAI benefit your studies? (such as proofreading, literature searching, brainstorming, writing or improving code, transcription, translation, or as part of your research methods)
• What are the potential risks and how will you manage these? (You might find this list helpful) 
• If you are thinking about using GenAI as a research tool: do you have the appropriate ethical approval? How will you protect the data? How will you avoid unintentional plagiarism? 
• Is there anything unclear around responsible use that you will need to explore further? 
• How will you critically evaluate GenAI outputs? (see the section: 'Critically evaluate GenAI outputs' below)
• Have you discussed use of GenAI with your supervisor? (see the section: 'Discuss with your supervisor' below)

PGR Code of Practice requirements (PGR students)

The key PGR Code of Practice 2026-2027 contains a section about Generative AI guidelines tailored to PGR students:

• PGR Code of Practice > preparing the thesis (scroll down to see the 'Generative AI' section) 
• The 'Statement of Originality' referred to in the PGR Code of Practice is on the PGR Examination Guidance and Forms webpage and also available to download here. 

Code of Good Practice in Research requirements (all researchers)

The Code of Good Practice in Research (section 5) covers guidelines on Generative AI: 

• 5.28. The University has issued guidance for researchers around the use of Generative AI in their work and research. This guidance seeks to support the responsible, appropriate, and informed use of AI tools and to support academic and research integrity. 
• 5.29. The overriding principle that applies to all staff and students is that any use of generative AI tools must be accompanied by critical analysis and oversight on the part of the user.
• 5.30. Where AI tools form part of your research design or methods, the toolkit within your discipline, or are a subject of your research, your use of them as a researcher should be covered by relevant ethical approval and data protection processes.
• 5.31. Where AI tools are being used to support writing, in order to meet crucial requirements for assessment or academic/research integrity, work must be your own effort (e.g. it must not be the product of generative AI) If you make use of an AI tool at any point in your research or writing process, you must acknowledge the use of that tool as you would any other piece of evidence or material in your submission. 

Good practice guidance for GenAI use

The two webpages below are essential reading for PGR students on how to use GenAI and maintain academic / research integrity:  

• UofG AI Information for Students (broad guidance aimed at all students from the Student Learning Development Team)
  • Contains advice on: Using AI for study, research and writing – without breaking our academic integrity rules 
• UofG AI in Research Guidance (from the Research Services Directorate) 
  • Has helpful advice including: “As a student, all your submitted work must be of your own creation, your own critical evaluation process, and your own experience. We expect your work to clearly and transparently acknowledge any sources – including AI – that have added to the work."

PGR students should be aware of the risk of potential for plagiarism when using GenAI tools, and this also highlights the importance of transparency and acknowledging use as part of responsible practice. GenAI tools may not reveal the sources of information that contribute to the AI-generated output, so any content may be someone else’s work (and therefore under copyright regulations).

The University guidance for students is that "Submitting AI-generated content as your own work without appropriate acknowledgement is academic misconduct. This applies even when AI use is otherwise permitted." 

Useful resources:

• UofG Plagiarism & Academic Integrity Code 2026-2027 (applies to all students) 
• Advice on appropriate GenAI use from the SRC
• The avoiding academic misconduct - quick tips is a useful source of advice:  

“Make sure all work you submit – essays, lab reports, presentations, exam answers, etc – is entirely your own work. You must not copy, translate, or lightly edit, someone else’s work, you must not have any other person, service or AI tool prepare your work, and you must not prepare your work with another person (except in specific assignments where it is clearly marked as a group effort).” 

An open discussion with your supervisor is important, to help define responsible use of GenAI in your studies and avoid any potential issues further down the line. Good practice would be to document this informal agreement e.g. an email stored for reference and record any updates to this over time. You could refer to step 1 in this Checklist as a basis for these discussions. 

 Supervisors are encouraged by the university to support discussions with their PGRs about use of AI – for more on this see the UofG AI in Research webpage - quick guidance for supervisors. 

What support would PGRs like from their Supervisors around GenAI use?

In an anonymous poll conducted during a webinar on GenAI (as part of the Research Integrity series 2024-2025), PGRs at UofG were asked: "What do you wish your supervisor could help with regarding GenAI in Research?" From the list of responses the key themes were: how to use it ethically / responsibly; how to acknowledge use; what is the difference between responsible use for a research publication compared to a thesis; how to use GenAI for assisting a literature review; how to use for translation of foreign-language texts; FAQs of decisions to be made; how to critically evaluate the results. 

The UofG GenAI for Researchers guidance highlights that “any use of generative AI tools must be accompanied by critical analysis and oversight on the part of the user”. Since GenAI tools are unable to understand the meaning of the results they produce, the outputs can be inaccurate, biased, outdated or entirely fabricated (including "hallucinations"). As a researcher, you remain responsible for ensuring the accuracy, quality and integrity of any work informed by GenAI. Before using AI-generated content, ask yourself the following questions: 

• Have I verified that any citations and references actually exist? 

• Have I cross-checked factual claims against reliable sources? 

• Is the information sufficiently up to date, particularly in fast moving fields? 

• Does the output align with my own knowledge, expertise, and critical judgement? 

• Can I explain and justify this content if questioned by my supervisor, examiner, or reviewers? 

• If AI generated or modified code, have I tested it independently and do I understand how it works? 

• Is the proposed methodology or analysis appropriate for my research question and discipline?  

"As a student graduating with a University of Glasgow degree, critical analysis is a key skill that you should develop, along with an understanding of research integrity." (source: UofG AI Quick Guidance for Students)

[Please note that this section is currently under review and will be updated by end of 2026]

For a helpful summary please see: UofG AI Information for Students > Using AI for study, research and writing – without breaking our academic integrity rules e.g. AI can be used to refine your wording, however “do not enter entire essays or paragraphs; use the method to help improve the language of words, phrases or individual sentences.” 

As a general rule, the university guidance recommends that students regard GenAI as a ‘conversation partner’ to get initial inspiration and ideas, to summarise key points, and to refine writing by improving grammar or spelling. They can be used for finding related literature (eg ResearchRabbit), summarising published research papers (eg Elicit), and to ask questions for a starting point on a topic (eg ChatGPT). 

The UofG Library team have guidance on using GenAI for literature searching.  

Responsible use is where these tools don't impact on the knowledge content or structure of your work – if so, this would no longer count as your own original work.  

This advice is from the university’s AI in Research webpage:  

“If you make use of AI at any point in your research or writing process, no matter at what stage, you must appropriately and transparently acknowledge the use of that source/platform as you would any other piece of evidence/material in your submission.”  

To acknowledge AI use in your thesis, the PGR Code (section 11) requires this to be included in the Statement of Originality:

"A Statement of Originality accompanies every thesis and should contain, if appropriate, a declaration and summary of any use of generative AI tools. This statement is intended to be a short, high level, summary. If more detail is required, students should embed details of generative AI use in their thesis, e.g. as part of the narrative, as a separate reflection, or in appendices. This will vary by use and by discipline."

You can find the Statement of Originality form on the PGR Examination Guidelines and Forms webpage (top RHS box). 

The university recommends that you treat the AI tool as personal correspondence for the purpose of referencing – advice on citing AI sources is given on the AI in Education webpage > how should I reference AI? (just scroll down to the last section on the page). 

Many AI tools retain, process or use user inputs in ways that may pose risks to privacy, confidentiality, intellectual property and research integrity. You should assume that anything you upload could be stored, processed, or used to improve the AI system and made visible to other users. This means that it would be your own copyright, IP or authorship that you could potentially be giving away or compromising through using these tools. For more advice on privacy concerns see: AI in Research > risks and limitations. 

For any queries on this, please discuss with your supervisor in the first instance. 

Do not upload the following: 

• Research data containing personal or identifiable information, 

• Sensitive or confidential research material  

• Unpublished manuscripts and thesis chapters. 

• Collaborative work that you do not solely own or for which you do not have permission from all collaborators 

• Peer review materials, including manuscripts you are reviewing  

• Commercially confidential or industry partner data 

• Intellectual property, such as novel research ideas, patentable inventions, datasets or other outputs that have not yet been protected 

• Copyrighted material where you do not have permission to share or upload the content

According to the Guidance from IT Services “Copilot is the only AI service approved for use with University data” (noting that for use of AI tools for research data - this needs to be approved by the relevant Ethics Committee and meet GDPR regulations*). They advise “you must be logged in with your UofG credentials to use Copilot Chat or this is not an approved use and will not meet the University’s security requirements. Always check for the green shield at the top of your chat, it indicates that enterprise data protection is in place.”  

*From the LISU team: “If you plan to use GenAI for research use, you will need to comply with ethics and data protection requirements.” (taken from this section in SharePoint by LISU ).