References, citations and avoiding plagiarism

This guidance presents UCL's general approach to acknowledging the use of generative AI and referencing generative AI. Generative AI (GenAI) is evolving rapidly and there is not yet general consensus on how to acknowledge and reference it. This guidance will therefore continue to be reviewed and updated.

Before using GenAI, you should ensure that:

• You know whether or not it is permitted (or required) for your assignment / research.
• You understand the limitations and risks of using GenAI.
• Your assignment / research remains your own work.

GenAI can be a useful starting point to gather background information on a topic, but be aware that:

• GenAI produces information that may be inaccurate, biased, or outdated.
• GenAI is not an original source of information: it reproduces information from sources which are often unidentified.
• GenAI may fabricate quotations and citations.
• It is always best to refer to original and credible sources of information.

If you do choose to use GenAI tools, you must always:

• Critically evaluate any output it produces.
• Carefully check any quotations or citations it creates.
• Correctly document your use of the tools so that it can be appropriately acknowledged.
• Retain drafts of your work so you can evidence your process.

When to acknowledge use of GenAI

The use of GenAI must be acknowledged in any piece of academic work where it has been used as a functional tool to assist in the process of creating the academic work, such as drafting ideas and planning or structuring written materials.

It is the nature of the task that determines whether use needs acknowledgement or not. This will be discipline and assessment dependent, so it is for teaching staff to determine. However, the following general principles may be used.

Instances where use of GenAI may not require acknowledgement include:

• familiarising oneself with a topic before refining your research process;
• reading an AI-generated summary of information from search results in a library research database to determine whether to proceed to consult the original sources, or using generative AI to summarise long or complex information to make it easier to review;
• helping to improve your grammar and writing structure.

Teaching staff should ensure they discuss these principles with their students and make expectations clear. Students should ask teaching staff if further clarification is needed.

How to acknowledge use of GenAI

The use of GenAI should be acknowledged in an ‘Appendix’ or 'Methods' section of any piece of academic work 

Minimum requirement to include in acknowledgement:

• Name and version of the GenAI system used; e.g. Microsoft Copilot (version GPT-4); ChatGPT-3.5
• Publisher (company that made the |GenAI system); e.g. Microsoft; OpenAI
• URL of the GenAI system.
• Brief description (single sentence) of context in which the tool was used.

For example: 

I acknowledge the use of Microsoft Copilot (version GPT-4, Microsoft, https://copilot.microsoft.com/) to summarise my initial notes and to proofread my final draft.

Further requirements may be stipulated by a department, academic programme or individual teaching staff, or for a particular assignment, and must be made clear to students when an assignment is set. Additional requirements may include expanded description in an ‘Appendix’ or ‘Methods’ section, such as:

• If relevant, the prompt(s) used to generate a response in the GenAI system.
• The date the output was generated.
• The output obtained (e.g. a ‘link to chat’ if ChatGPT, or a compilation of all output generated as an appendix).
• How the output was changed for use or incorporation into a piece of work (e.g. a tracked-changes document or a descriptive paragraph).

These acknowledgements as an appendix should not be included in the word count of a piece of work, unless stipulated otherwise for a particular assignment or by a particular academic programme or department. The appendix should either be placed at the beginning or end of the document.

Some referencing styles suggest that GenAI systems should be cited in a similar way to other sources, most notably personal communications, but there are issues with citing GenAI systems:

• A GenAI tool cannot be classed as an author – it cannot take responsibility for its work, nor does it generate original ideas but reproduces ideas found elsewhere.
• A primary function of a reference list is so the reader can refer to the original source, which is not possible with AI generated content.

This proposal therefore favours the approach of most academic publishers (1-3), which stipulates GenAI systems should not be cited as an author nor included as a source in the reference list.

There may be cases where it is appropriate or necessary for a student or researcher to refer to AI-generated output within a piece of work and / or include it in a reference list, e.g. where the piece of work addresses the topic of GenAI and discussion around outputs, where there is reference to a formally published output generated by AI, where it is required by the academic department, or where a student has not identified a primary source of the information despite the issues with relying on GenAI as a secondary source of information (which may be considered poor academic practice). Students are advised to check with their department.

In such cases, the output should be treated as a work with no author, unless specified otherwise by departmental guidelines or the standardised referencing style you are using.

Where a student or researcher is required to use a standard referencing style which has specific rules for citing and referencing GenAI, the rules of the citation style should be followed, in addition to acknowledging the use of GenAI as outlined above. This may require the use of in-text citations and reference list entries where the GenAI tool is listed as an author. E.g. APA, Chicago.

1. Stokel-Walker C. Chatgpt Listed as Author on Research Papers. Nature. 2023;613(7945):620-621. Available from: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00107-z
2. Ganjavi C, Eppler MB, Pekcan A, Biedermann B, Abreu A, Collins GS, Gill IS and Cacciamani GE. Publishers’ and journals’ instructions to authors on use of generative artificial intelligence in academic and scientific publishing: bibliometric analysis. BMJ. 2024;384:e077192. Available from: <doi:https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2023-077192>

3. Hosseini M, Resnik DB and Holmes K. The ethics of disclosing the use of artificial intelligence tools in writing scholarly manuscripts. Research Ethics. 2023;19(4):449-465. Available from: <doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/17470161231180449>

Acknowledging the use of AI and referencing AI © 2023 by UCL - Library Skills is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0