Plagiarism is a serious academic and research misconduct offense. The Research Misconduct Policy describes it as “the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit and without specific approval, including those learned of through confidential review of others’ research proposals and manuscripts.”. Full processes by which this is evaluated and addressed can be found at University of Utah Research Misconduct Policy webpage.

Reports of Research Misconduct, including plagiarism, should be made to the Office of Research Integrity and Compliance.

The ECE Academic Misconduct Policy describes the policy on plagiarism as it relates to coursework. Reports of academic misconduct should be made to the instructor of the course (the student’s research supervisor in the case of a research course), the ECE Department Chair, and the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for the College of Engineering. A student may report to any one of these, who will then inform the others of the report.

We note that policies and practices related to AI are quickly evolving. As new policies are developed at the university, college, or department level, ECE will also adhere to those policies:

Coursework Use: The allowed or disallowed use of AI in coursework will be at the discretion of the instructor, and should be posted in the course syllabus.

Research Use: The use of AI in research will be at the discretion of the student’s supervisory committee chair. The use should conform to expectations set out by the VP of Research

Research Writing/Publication: The use of AI in research writing/publication should follow the guidance and policies of the journal for which the writing is being done, and should be discussed with the student’s supervisory committee chair. It is important to note that NOT acknowledging the use of AI in research, writing, editing, etc. can be considered plagiarism.

The following excerpt from arXiv: describes the responsibility of authors regarding the use of AI:

It is important that all authors remember that by signing their name as an author of a paper, they each individually take full responsibility for all its contents, irrespective of how the contents were generated. If generative AI language tools generate inappropriate language, plagiarized content, errors, mistakes, incorrect references, or misleading content, and that output is included in scientific works, it is the responsibility of the author(s).

The use of content generated by artificial intelligence (AI) in an article (including but not limited to text, figures, images, and code) shall be disclosed in the acknowledgments section of any article submitted to an IEEE publication. The AI system used shall be identified, and specific sections of the article that use AI-generated content shall be identified and accompanied by a brief explanation regarding the level at which the AI system was used to generate the content. – Guidelines for Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Generated Text

The use of AI systems for editing and grammar enhancement is common practice and, as such, is generally outside the intent of the above policy. In this case, disclosure as noted above is recommended.

There is no formal guidance regarding how to reference AI-generated content in IEEE referencing style. Until formal advice is available use the Unpublished Material / Private Communication format. (VU Library, March 2023) – IEEE referencing style example

• As the private communication may not provide recoverable data, the private communication may be cited in-text only.
• If citing your private communication in-text only, provide the initials as well as the surname of the communicator, along with as exact date of communication as possible.
• An entry does not need to be included in the reference list

In-text example: Modern research tools lead to better results (OpenAI’s ChatGPT, private communication, 10 March 2023).