Plagiarism and AI at Birmingham: exactly what editing is allowed

The short answer

Birmingham is the rare university that tells you exactly what editing help may do to your text — and where it stops. The line is between improving how your writing reads and improving what it says.

The governing document is the Code of Practice on Academic Integrity, published per cohort year. One gap worth knowing: the PDF carries no approval date, no version number and no approving committee. For a document that can end a degree, that is a real omission, and we would rather flag it than pretend otherwise.

What editing is allowed

Verbatim, from Appendix A.1.6 — generative AI or other editorial assistance may only be used to offer advice and guidance on:

• “Correcting spelling and punctation.”
• “Ensuring text follows the conventions of grammar and syntax in written English.”
• “Shortening long sentences or reducing long paragraphs without changes to the overall content.”
• “Ensuring the consistency, formatting and ordering of page numbers, headers and footers, and footnotes and endnotes.”
• “Improving the positioning of tables and figures and the clarity, grammar, spelling and punctuation of any text in table or figure legends.”

That is a genuinely liveable list, and it is the one to hold in your head if you write in a second language. Fixing your English is allowed. Nobody is asking you to submit prose you know is clumsy.

For research students there is an extra allowance: “For postgraduate research theses written in English, proof-reading by a member of the supervisory team, a professional or non-professional proof-reader is acceptable to the extent that it involves the rewriting of some of the text originating from the Student for the purposes of clarifying written English only.”

For what it is worth, this is close to the boundary our own check is built around: it marks filler, hedging and tired transitions in your sentences and suggests plainer wording, and nothing is rewritten for you. But read the prohibited list before you rely on any tool, ours included — and read your assessment brief, which can be stricter.

What editing is not allowed

The same clause, on the other side of the line. Editorial assistance must not be used to:

• “Alter text to clarify and/or develop the ideas, arguments, and explanations.”
• “Correct the accuracy of the information.”
• “Develop or change the ideas and arguments presented.”
• “Translate text into, or from, the language being studied.”
• “Or for the purpose of reducing the length of the submission so as to comply with a word limit requirement.”

And the framing sentence, which explains all five:

“Rewriting or editing of text with the purpose of improving the Student’s research arguments or contributing new arguments or rewriting computer code is not acceptable, whether undertaken by a person, by generative AI or by any other means, and may be deemed to be plagiarism.”

Note “whether undertaken by a person”. Birmingham applies the same rule to a helpful friend and to a chatbot, which is consistent and worth knowing before you ask someone to “just have a look at my argument”.

The second item — correcting the accuracy of the information — is the one that surprises people. If a tool tells you a date is wrong and you change it, that is outside the permitted list. The accuracy of your work is supposed to be yours.

The word-limit trap

This deserves its own heading because it is the most likely way an honest, careful student at Birmingham crosses the line without noticing.

You may use help to shorten long sentences and paragraphs “without changes to the overall content”. You may not use it “for the purpose of reducing the length of the submission so as to comply with a word limit requirement”.

The difference is intent and scale. Tightening a flabby sentence is editing. Feeding your 9,000-word draft to a tool to get it under 8,000 is not — because at that scale something has to go, and what goes is content. If you are over the limit, cut it yourself: decide what matters least. That decision is part of the work being assessed.

AI is plagiarism, not a separate offence

Several universities give AI its own category. Birmingham deliberately does not:

“Plagiarism can occur in all types of assessment when a Student claims as their own, intentionally or by omission, work which was not done by that Student. […] Submitting work and assessments created by someone or something else, as if it was your own, is plagiarism and is a form of academic misconduct. This includes Artificial Intelligence (AI)-generated content and content written by a third party (e.g. a company, other person, or a friend or family member) and fabricating data.”

Contract cheating and AI share one Appendix A category — “Commissioning work/ buying essays & Software / using generative AI” — covering work “bought from an essay writing company/website, downloaded from an essay repository, or prepared/generated by someone or something, other than the Student. This would normally constitute a deliberate attempt to deceive the marker.” Birmingham attaches a footnote naming the criminal statute: “The Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022 came into effect on 28th April 2022 and made it illegal for ‘cheating services’ to be provided to students.”

Using AI as a study aid is a different matter and is permitted: “The University’s framework does allow you to use Generative AI tools as study aids for your personal learning and in your research. You are permitted to use these tools in this context, as long as you do not submit the actual AI-generated output as your own work for assessment.”

Where use is authorised, Birmingham publishes a menu of acknowledgement forms rather than one prescribed wording: a pre-defined statement, sharing the prompts and outputs and the modifications you made, a reflective component, or a citation. Which one applies “should” be in the assessment specification. Our AI disclosure statement guide covers what a good one contains.

Also worth knowing: the copying category expressly names “Websites which have study documents and assessments shared by other students” and “Websites that will provide answers to questions posted by students”.

Why Birmingham avoids the word cheating

This is a small thing that tells you a lot about the process:

“We don’t usually refer to ‘cheating’ because it implies that the misconduct was intentional. Academic misconduct and plagiarism can be accidental or unintentional. We will usually refer to ‘academic misconduct’.”

It cuts both ways. You are not being called dishonest — but equally, “I didn’t mean to” does not remove the finding, since the definition covers work claimed as your own “intentionally or by omission”. Intention shows up in how the case is categorised and penalised, not in whether it exists.

The Code also reaches further than current students. It applies to “Registered Students, Students on Leave of Absence, Students with Thesis Awaited Status, Externally Registered Students and Graduands”.

What a second moderate case triggers

Birmingham grades findings as moderate or serious. The factors are published: your academic level, whether you could reasonably be expected to have learned referencing by now, the nature of the irregularity, how much of the work is affected, and “whether there have been any previous recorded instances of Plagiarism”.

Then this, in the definition of serious plagiarism:

“This category also includes a case of repeated moderate plagiarism.”

So a second moderate case is serious by definition, regardless of how minor it looks in isolation — and serious cases leave the School and go to a College Misconduct and Fitness to Practise Committee. If you have had one finding, the stakes on the next one are categorically different.

Serious plagiarism also arises where there has been “an attempt to deceive the marker by the Student passing off as their own, work which they have not done”.

Sanctions

Moderate, on a taught programme: the mark stands; a resubmission or further attempt capped at a mark no lower than the pass mark; the mark reduced to any level including zero, with a further attempt permitted if the regulations allow, capped at the pass mark; or the mark reduced including to zero with no opportunity to resit.

For a research thesis, moderate plagiarism has its own remedy: you “may resubmit, within a maximum of 20 working days’ of the Outcome Letter, the dissertation/thesis for the original qualification with the offending sections/data edited and re-worked so that the plagiarism is removed”, and it counts as the same attempt.

Serious: the case becomes academic misconduct under the University Regulations and goes to a Committee. Published sanctions include agreeing to appropriate tuition, reducing the assessment or module mark with or without a resit, limiting the type of award you can achieve, and withdrawal from the University. A case also goes to Committee if a moderate sanction would cause you to fail the programme.

Whether Birmingham can revoke a degree already awarded is not published, so we are not going to tell you either way.

Process, and the route that is closed

Every School has an Academic Integrity Officer. You get an Academic Integrity Meeting with “at least five working days’ notice”, and it can proceed without you — so go.

Disagreeing with the outcome is not an appeal in the usual sense; it is an election for a hearing: you “may request that their case be considered by a College Misconduct and Fitness to Practise Committee”, within 10 working daysof the Outcome Letter. That is a real decision to weigh, because the Committee’s powers are wider than the Officer’s.

And one door is shut explicitly:

“A Student may not normally use other processes e.g. those under the Code of Practice on Extenuating Circumstances and/or the Code of Practice on Academic Appeals, to request an outcome that would change the outcome of an Academic Integrity Meeting.”

There is a useful safeguard for research students: where plagiarism is suspected in a thesis, “examination of the project or thesis must be suspended until it has been established whether or not plagiarism has occurred.”

On evidence, Birmingham never names a similarity product — the Code says only “text-matching and other software”. It publishes no position on AI detection either way. What it does require of every School is “procedures to review, monitor and quality-assure reports generated by any text-matching or other software”, and it treats such a report as one input among several: an investigation “would normally involve considering any evidence, which may include a report generated by text-matching software, or observations reported by the marker or invigilator”.

Which is the right way to read any score, including ours: our published error rates are measured on English and German corpora, and no detector produces proof. See how accurate AI detectors really are and, if you are already in a case, what to do when you are accused. The Guild of Students’ advice service can provide someone to attend meetings with you.

If a detector score is what started this, our guide to an AI detector flagging your thesis sets out what that number does and does not establish on its own.

Birmingham does not publish a standard of proof for the finding, nor annual case counts.

Before you submit

• Keep edits at the level of language, not argument. That is the whole of A.1.6 in one line.
• Cut to the word limit yourself. Using a tool for that purpose is on the prohibited list.
• Do not have anyone — person or software — fix your facts.
• Treat a first finding as a hinge. A second moderate case is serious by definition.
• Attend the meeting. It can go ahead without you.

If you want a read on your own text before you hand it in, our AI check is free up to 1,500 words, with no account and no name.

Sources

• University of Birmingham: Code of Practice on Academic Integrity, 2026-27 — carries a cohort year but no approval date, version number or approving committee.
• University of Birmingham: Academic integrity: support and advice — page carries no date.
• University of Birmingham, Academic Skills Centre: Student guidance on generative AI — the acknowledgement menu; page carries no date.

This page is orientation, not legal advice. What binds you is your assessment specification and the Code of Practice for your cohort year.