Citation & Disclosure - Graduate Writing Center
Citation and Disclosure
Disclosing one's use of generative AI to produce work is becoming a norm and best practice—and sometimes a requirement. This is true in the publishing world, academia, and DoD.
DoD interim guidance for the use of GenAI emphasizes the need for transparency and citation, expecting students and authors to label documents that have been produced with generative AI's help.
- Citation: Indicate to your reader when text and images were generated by others or GenAI.
- Disclosure: Acknowledge the role of AI in preparing manuscripts and completing coursework.
If you plan to use, or have used, generative AI as a tool for composing coursework or thesis work, ensure that your use aligns with the policy of your professor or advisors. Don't assume—ask your professor, providing them with specific examples of how you plan to use, or have used, GenAI.
In addition to obtaining permission, disclose AI use to your readers and stakeholders (e.g., professors, advisors, publishers, sponsors) with a short, descriptive statement explaining the nature and purpose of that use.
For more context, please review NPS's Academic Honor Code and Interim Guiding Principles on using GenAI. For information on how to cite and disclose, see below:
While generative AI can help you develop an initial understanding of a topic, it should not be cited in your work as a source of reliable information. Always verify AI output by finding the information in credible sources; review and cite these credible sources in your work.
That said, if you discuss AI-generated lines or passages in your document, such as an AI-generated definition or scenario, place the AI-generated text in quotation marks and cite the AI tool you used.
For more details on when and how to cite generative AI, see the NPS citation guide's Citation and Writing Guidance for Gen AI Use in Academic Work and DKL's GenAI research guide.
The citation guide also offers style-specific examples of how to cite GenAI:
A disclosure statement is distinct from explaining use of generative AI in your research methodology. In its simplest form, a disclosure statement (also called an acknowledgement) describes how you used GenAI to support writing and manuscript development, identifying the tool(s) you used and explaining why you used it.
At NPS, we recommend that a disclosure statement do the following:
(a) Acknowledge you have permission to use the AI tools in the way you have used them
(b) Identify what tool you used
(c) Explain the reasoning for your use
(d) Describe how you used it
(e) Identify any risks introduced by your use of AI and how you mitigated these risks, describing your process of quality assurance
Here's an example, with each element labeled (these labels would not appear in the actual disclosure statement):
(a) Professor Rinaldi and I agreed that I would use generative AI in a limited way, (c) to clarify topic sentences and improve grammar, punctuation, and concision. (b) I used Anthropic's Claude 3 to (c) find and correct spelling and grammar errors, improve the topic sentences, and increase clarity and concision of my paragraphs.
(d) I input each paragraph I wrote into Claude and asked for recommendations and used the same prompt for each paragraph: "Please review the following paragraph. First, make recommendations for how I could strengthen and focus the topic sentence. Then, in a table with three columns, present a side-by-side comparison of the original text and your recommended revisions for improving grammar, clarity, and conciseness. In the third column, provide an explanation of each recommendation."
(e) To reduce the risk that the tool would introduce language that I did not approve into my draft or make suggestions that did not improve the text, I reviewed each suggestion individually before adopting them. For additional quality control, I discussed my draft with a Graduate Writing Center coach.
Disclosure statements can be integrated in a variety of places in your manuscript: within a footnote, as a statement at the end of the paper before the list of references, or when introducing code, figures, or tables created with AI.
For more examples and how-to guidance, see the NPS Guidance on Disclosing Generative AI Use in Academic Work and attend the GWC's "Generative AI for Research and Writing" workshop.
Citation & Disclosure Links
- Handout: NPS Guidance on Disclosing Generative AI Use in Academic Work, NPS Generative AI Task Force
- Webpage with handout: "Citation and Writing Guidance for Gen AI Use in Academic Work," NPS Dudley Knox Library
- Research guide: "Generative AI," NPS Dudley Knox Library
- GWC workshop: "Generative AI for Research and Writing" (slides)
Writing Topics A–Z
This index links to the most relevant page for each item. Please email us at writingcenter@nps.edu if we're missing something!
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