by Thomas Mejtoft, PhD
Introduction to the guidelines
These guidelines are used on three different courses in scientific writing (given in English). The courses are structured around the writing process with students writing a scientific paper based on an idea that they have initiated themselves. The courses are student active and have regular peer-review meetings and a final submission with peer-review. The final grade is based both on the process (~75%) and the final quality of the paper (~25%).
New since 2024 is that the students need to formally “agree” to follow the guideline and they have watched a pre-recorded lecture.
The most important part of the guidelines is the explanation about how the use of generative AI impacts the learning process. The part in italic in the guidelines below. By not only giving the students a “You can use AI, I don’t care” or a “You can’t use AI, that’s cheating”, but rather an explanation to how the use of AI impacts learning, we can see that the students get more motivated to engage in their own learning. This also gives students that are cautious an incentive to use AI to support their learning. Since the larger portion of the grade on these courses is based on the process and not the final result, the students do not need to use AI to achieve a high final result (which might include generating texts for the paper) but rather use AI to support the writing process (which is according to the guidelines).
Before the students start the writing process, they must acknowledge in a submission that they have read and understood the guidelines. The instructions given are these:
- Read the guidelines.
- Watch the lecture on AI and the writing process.
- State in the submission that you understand how you can use AI during this course in this submission.
General guidelines
Generative AI is an amazing technology that can support us in our writing. According to most journals and publishers, generative AI cannot be a co-author of a paper since the technology cannot take responsibility for the results it produces. Furthermore, from a legal point of view generative AI has tendencies to copy and parts of the results often get caught as plagiarism. The author is accountable for the accuracy of the final work and making sure that there is no plagiarism, it is therefore your responsibility what the generative AI has produced if you use it in your work.
Here is a recorded lecture on the use of AI in the writing process.
Experience show that using generative AI as support in correcting spelling and grammar is successful as long as the texts used have been written by the author, i.e., the texts are original text.
The purpose of this course is to increase your understanding of the writing process and boost your confidence in creating a high quality report based on primary data. The process of writing and rewriting texts increase the understanding of the content and have a positive impact on learning both content and the process of creating reports. Writing is closely linked to reflection and analysis of the content and the collected data. Using generative AI to create texts affect the learning negatively.
How can generative AI be used during the course?
During the writing process (the draft stage)
- Generative AI can be used as inspiration and a discussion partner.
- Generative AI can be used to generate e.g., images based on your prompts.
- Generative AI should not be used for generating texts for the paper.
During the final editing stage (final paper)
- AI can be used for support to improve grammar and readability of the text you have written.
- AI should not be used for generating new texts.
Full disclosure in the methods chapter
If generative AI has been used in any stage or for any purpose in the research or writing process, you should fully disclose how it has been used in the methods chapter.
- Which tools have been used and how have they been used?
- What known biases may exist with the AI tools used?
- What aspects of the paper have the AI assisted with?
- What kind of modifications etc. to the AI generated content have been done?
- Make necessary references to the AI tools used in the reference list.
If anything is unclear, discuss with your supervisor.
(created: 2024-09-13, updated: 2025-03-28)