An academic community is built on trust, and part of that trust includes upholding standards of academic integrity. The Graduate School policy on Academic Integrity says that Academic integrity is a fundamental university value. Through the honest completion of academic work, students sustain the integrity of the university while facilitating the university’s imperative for the transmission of knowledge and culture based upon the generation of new and innovative ideas.

Central to the “honest completion of academic work” is that it is your own work, and not “prepared by any person or technology (e.g., artificial intelligence) other than the student responsible”. The unauthorized use of generative AI is one—but not the only—form of academic dishonesty.

Unless explicitly told otherwise in writing by their instructor, committee, or teaching supervisor, students should assume that the use of generative AI is prohibited on all tasks and assignments and that its unauthorized use will be considered an academic integrity violation and prosecuted as such. In the specific situations where a faculty member does explicitly permit the use of AI to complete a task or assignment, students must be transparent about whether and how they have used AI.

This policy applies not only to coursework, but to other work completed as part of the graduate program, including PhD dissertations, masters projects, and qualifying papers. In sum, all work you complete as an academic should be your own work. If you have any questions about what this means, you should consult your instructor, your advisor, or the director of graduate studies.

Unless explicitly told otherwise in writing by the instructor, students should assume that the use of generative AI is prohibited on all assignments and that its unauthorized use will be considered an academic integrity violation and prosecuted as such. In the specific situations where a faculty member explicitly permits the use of AI to complete a task or assignment, students must be transparent about whether and exactly how they have used AI.

Unless approved by your committee, generative AI use is prohibited for all aspects of producing a dissertation, masters project, or qualifying paper. This includes, but is not limited to, brainstorming ideas, generating research questions, producing written content, editing original writing, and data analysis.

Any use of AI in your PhD research needs to be approved in advance by your full committee. To seek approval, begin by consulting with your committee chair. They will advise you on how to proceed with obtaining broader committee approval.

Any use of AI in your masters project must be approved in advance by the faculty member supervising that project.

You may not make any use of AI in your qualifying paper (either by basing your qualifying paper on a course paper for which you were permitted to use AI, or by using AI in the revision of a course paper that did not previously use it).

In all these cases, if AI is approved for use in your project, its use must be documented in writing. Any questions about what needs to be disclosed and how should be directed to the relevant faculty member (e.g., your committee chair).

Unless approved by your supervising faculty member, generative AI should not be used in any part of the work assigned to you as part of a research or teaching assistantship, or while teaching your own class. This includes any work you do for a class you are teaching yourself or serving as a TA for (e.g., producing course materials, grading assignments). It also includes any work you complete as an RA (e.g., generating or coding data, conducting literature searches). In short, do not use AI to complete any teaching, TA, or RA tasks without the explicit consent of the faculty member supervising your work.

When working on other projects that are not official assignments (e.g., papers that are not part of your dissertation) you are advised to be extremely careful about the use of AI, if you use it at all. Multiple philosophy journals will not accept submissions that have used AI (e.g., requiring acknowledgment that a submission “is not the product (in whole or in part) of Generative AI”). If you do use AI while working on a project, you should be sure to document all the use you make of it (and may be required to disclose this when submitting work to journals). The situation is changing quickly, and you are encouraged to consult your advisor if you are unsure how best to proceed.

Given the collaborative nature of much recent work in philosophy and the prevalence of coauthorship in other fields, the department has formulated a new policy about the coauthorship of doctoral dissertations and Master’s projects. Dissertations and Master’s projects may be coauthored with UB faculty members, other graduate students, or collaborators outside the university as long as the following conditions are satisfied.

• The amount of total research effort put into a dissertation or project that is in part coauthored must be equivalent to the amount of total work the student would have completed on a single-authored dissertation or project. It is expected that a dissertation with coauthored chapters will include more chapters than a dissertation that is solely authored by the student.
• An attributions page at the beginning of the dissertation or project should lay out in detail the extent of the student’s specific contribution to the coauthored portions of the work. The student’s dissertation or project advisor should certify that the student’s contribution is sufficient and that the description of their contribution is correct.
• Ideally, graduate students should be the first and primary authors on all portions of their dissertations or Master’s projects. First authors are the primary persons responsible for the ideas behind the research, carrying out the research, and writing up the research. However, it is permissible for students to be secondary authors on portions of their dissertations or projects.

Special care and attention should be paid to the following issues:

• Advisors should ensure that students do not fail to develop sufficient research skills of their own because of undue reliance upon the research skills of their collaborators.
• Attention should be paid not only to the amount or proportion of work students put into initial drafts of chapters or projects but also to the quantity of work they put into revising the research outputs, since the two may vary.
• Advisors should not insist upon being listed as coauthors on student work when their role was merely advisory and does not represent a substantial contribution to the research.
• Since the coauthorship of dissertations is not standard practice within academic philosophy, students and their advisors should be aware that some search committee members might look upon such coauthorship with some suspicion. Search committees might think that a body of high quality coauthored research fails to give them a sufficiently good idea of the applicant’s potential as a researcher.

Advisors are not required to approve or accept coauthored dissertation chapters or MA projects. They may elect to require students to be the sole authors of all chapters or projects.