Getting started

All HDR students are required to complete the online research integrity and ethics training module Responsible Research Practice.

In addition, depending on your faculty or school requirements and the nature of your research, you may be required to complete one or more of the following modules.

• Human Ethics Health and Medical (for students in the Faculty of Medicine and Health) or Human Ethics General (for students in other faculties/schools)
• Ethics for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research
• Animal Ethics or (Animal Ethics refresher if you have previously completed Animal Ethics more than three years ago)
• Introduction to Animal Research 
• Training in animal research techniques

You can self-enrol in these modules in Canvas. Select ‘Courses’ from the left-hand menu, then ‘All courses’, then ‘Browse more courses’ and search for the name of the module. When you find it, select ‘Join course’ and that module will appear on your Canvas dashboard.

Research Integrity Advisers are experienced academic researchers who can provide you with confidential advice about responsible research practice and managing any related issues.

Depending on the nature of your research, you may need to gain approval from one of the University’s ethics review bodies before you begin your research.

• The human ethics team can provide information and support about the required approvals processes for research involving humans, which includes administering questionnaires or surveys, conducting interviews or focus groups, investigating or observing human behaviour, and conducting any experiment involving humans.
• The animal ethics team can provide information and support about the required approvals processes for research involving live animals, which includes observational studies of animals in their natural environments.

A clinical trial is any research study that assesses the effects of a health-related intervention on any human participant’s health outcomes. Clinical trials conducted in Australia have significant regulatory requirements, so you need to obtain authorisation before you conduct one as part of your research.

The University’s Clinical Trials Support office can provide information about what is required.

If your research will involve gathering data, working or completing an internship within a medical or health facility or a school or childcare or setting, you must obtain certain clearances beforehand to ensure the safety of all involved.

These may include:

• NSW Ministry of Health verification
• National Police Certificate (and other equivalents for international students)
• Working With Children Check
• Vaccinations
• First aid training.

Your supervisor will be able to advise which requirements apply to you.

• Academic Integrity Policy
• Acceptable Use of ICT Resources Policy
• Student Charter
• Academic Integrity: Artificial intelligence (webpage)
• Generative Artificial Intelligence (intranet page)
• Generative-AI: Guidelines for researchers (online article)
• Generative-AI: Guidelines for researchers (downloadable PDF)
• How to use generative artificial intelligence in the classroom (webpage)
• AI in Education (resource created by students for students, explaining how gen AI can be used productively and responsibly at the University of Sydney)
• Your faculty or school’s ethics protocols
• Any additional ethics protocols applicable to your field and/or research project
• Any applicable funding agreements, data sharing agreements and/or commercial contracts.

In general terms, gen AI tools may be used where, for example, they assist in improving the spelling or grammar of your writing, but not where they generate content for you.

For example, the use of in-built and external spelling and/or grammar checkers (e.g. Microsoft Word spellcheck, Grammarly, etc.) and reference and citation management tools (e.g. EndNote, Mendeley, Zotero, etc.) are all permitted.

However, inputting prompts into a gen AI tool (e.g. Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, etc.) to generate written or other content; uploading a draft of your work into a gen AI tool to improve the academic language or any other aspect of your work; and/or incorporating gen AI outputs as substantive content in your thesis or other submitted work are all prohibited, except under certain circumstances as outlined under ‘Responsible use of generative AI in research’. Using gen AI in any of these prohibited ways could result in the forfeiting of your intellectual property (IP) rights for the work produced.

The responsible use of gen AI tools may be permitted when it is integral to your research design or methodology and its use has been approved by your supervisor.

If you are considering using any form of gen AI or gen AI-assisted technology as part of your research methodology or in ways integral to your research project, you must check with your supervisor first to confirm whether this is permitted. 

If you plan on using gen AI in any other way, you can set up a time with your supervisor to discuss how to approach the responsible use of gen AI.

Use an approved tool

Wherever possible, only use the University’s protected version of Microsoft Copilot (a gen AI tool that uses GPT-4 to generate text responses and DALL-E 3 to generate images) by logging in with your University email address and password. Doing this will ensure that your inputs are confidential, anonymised and not stored or used for training purposes, mitigating the risk of confidential information leaking. The University provides you with free access to this secure version of Microsoft Copilot; to confirm that you’re using it, you should see your username or email address and the green ‘Protected’ badge somewhere on the screen.

For more guidance on how to use Copilot securely and responsibly at the University of Sydney, see ‘How to use generative artificial intelligence in the classroom’.

Be mindful of the information you enter or upload

Never enter or upload any personal, sensitive or confidential information into any gen AI tool. This includes information such as your own or anyone else’s full name, date of birth, residential address or health information; any identifying numbers or passwords; any proprietary, highly protected or commercially or otherwise sensitive information; and any material protected by copyright, including content from the Library’s eResources and from the University’s proprietary teaching resources.

Only enter or upload information into a gen AI tool that you have permission to use. Do not, for example, enter or upload any Indigenous or First Nations data without prior written permission from the data custodian.

Be mindful of the output generated

Content generated by gen AI tools may include incorrect or inaccurate information, may reflect biases from the training data used, and may breach copyright and/or other protections. Always independently verify and edit any AI-generated content included in your work, to ensure its integrity, accuracy and suitability.

If you use any form of gen AI in any aspect of either your research or your thesis, you should:

• clearly identify and acknowledge the contribution of any gen AI tool(s) to all research processes and outputs by including an appropriate attribution statement that identifies the relevant content, identifies the tool(s) used and describes their use in a reproducible manner
• be able to verify and replicate your research processes and findings, including those involving the use of gen AI.

You should also document (such as by taking screenshots of) all prompts that you input into any gen AI tool, and keep records of all generated outputs.

A relevant attribution statement should be included in the preliminary pages of your thesis.

Where you have not used gen AI

"No content generated by generative AI tools has been used in the preparation of this thesis."

Where you have used gen AI as part of your research design and/or methodology

"During the preparation of this thesis, [Name of tool or service] was used only for the purposes of [e.g. research design], the details of which are included within the methodology section for [e.g. Chapters X, Y and Z]. No generative AI tool was used to generate, enhance or amend text.  The author takes full responsibility for the submitted thesis and ensures the work is their own and has used generative AI within the parameters of use, see University of Sydney generative AI guide for researchers."

Where you have used gen AI for text-enhancement purposes in your thesis-writing process

"During the preparation of this thesis, [Name of tool or service] was used for the purposes of text enhancement, including [Outline and provide examples of how/where the text was enhanced, e.g. sentence structure, paraphrasing, etc.]. Where any text was modified by generative AI, the author then reviewed the resulting content for any errors, inaccuracies or biases, and modified it as required. The author takes full responsibility for the submitted thesis and ensures the work is their own and has used generative AI within the parameters of use, see University of Sydney generative AI guide for researchers."

Where you have used gen AI for any purpose and have listed or described this use in an appendix to your thesis

"During the preparation of this thesis, [Name of tool or service] was used in order to perform the functions listed at Appendix X [Provide relevant appendix number here, and list all relevant functions there]. The author then reviewed the generated content for any errors, inaccuracies or biases, and modified it as required.  The author takes full responsibility for the submitted thesis and ensures the work is their own and has used generative AI within the parameters of use, see University of Sydney generative AI guide for researchers.”