Plagiarism and AI at UQ: you must be allowed to check your draft

The short answer

UQ requires its staff to let you check a draft through Turnitin before you submit for real — and it has switched off the AI writing indicator entirely. The first of those is a right most students do not know they have.

The awkward part: neither of UQ’s binding policies mentions AI at all. The rule that governs your use of it lives on a webpage.

The right to check a draft

This is in the Assessment Procedure, effective 13 July 2026, and it is phrased as an obligation:

“Where assignments are submitted through text-matching software (for example, Turnitin), where possible, students must have the opportunity to submit a draft assignment to the software and review the similarity report prior to submission of the final assignment.”

And UQ says the same thing to students directly:

“At UQ you can submit a draft of your assessment to Turnitin to get a Similarity Report. This will allow you to review your own assessment before your final submission.”

Compare that with Toronto, where students cannot self-check at all, or Ohio State, where Turnitin is “licensed explicitly for classroom or teaching use only”. UQ has decided the tool is more useful as a teaching aid than as a trap, and written that into procedure.

Two practical notes. The obligation is qualified — “where possible” — so it is not absolute, but if your course uses Turnitin and offers no draft submission, the procedure is on your side when you ask. And what you can check is similarity only: the AI indicator is off, so there is no AI score for you or anyone else to see.

On reading the report you get: a similarity percentage is not a verdict, and a high number is often correctly quoted and cited material. See what a Turnitin score actually means.

The AI indicator is switched off

UQ’s statement is short and dated:

“Turnitin has released a tool to indicate the probability of text being produced by a generative AI tool. UQ has disabled the Turnitin AI writing indicator functionality for all assessments from Semester 2, 2025.”

We will report exactly that and no more. UQ gives no reasonon this page — not reliability, not privacy, not anything. Other universities in this series published their reasoning; UQ did not, and we are not going to borrow someone else’s explanation and attach it to UQ.

What replaces it is human judgement:

“If someone teaching a course sees indications of misconduct, including use of inappropriate AI outputs, they may ask an integrity officer to investigate. This investigation explores if there is sufficient evidence to allege misconduct.”

So a concern at UQ starts with a person noticing something and ends with an investigation, not with a percentage. Prepare accordingly: keep drafts and version history, and be able to talk about your own argument. See how to prove you wrote it yourself and what to do when you are accused.

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.

The same limit applies to any tool including ours: our published error rates are measured on English and German corpora, and no detector produces proof — how accurate AI detectors really are.

The policy does not mention AI

This is worth knowing precisely, because it affects what you can rely on.

UQ’s Student Code of Conduct Policy (effective 1 January 2026, approved by the Vice-Chancellor) and its Student Integrity and Misconduct Policy (effective 1 January 2026, approved by Senate) contain a long list of academic misconduct: cheating, falsification or fabrication of results, misrepresentations, plagiarism, solicitation including contract cheating, aiding a contract cheating service, and more.

The words “artificial intelligence” and “generative” do not appear in either.

The operative AI rule is published on a student webpage instead: “At UQ, the use of AI outputs without attribution, and contrary to any direction by teaching staff, is a form of plagiarism and constitutes academic misconduct.”

That is a coherent position — the plagiarism limb does the work — but it means the binding instrument is silent and a webpage carries the rule. Where it matters, your course profile is the document to rely on: the Assessment Procedure makes it mandatory content, requiring each course profile to state “the way in which generative artificial intelligence may be used”.

Careless is not the same as dishonest

UQ draws this line more clearly than most, and it is genuinely reassuring:

“Unintentional plagiarism includes careless or inadequate referencing, or a failure to reference properly. It is treated as ‘poor academic practice’ or negligence, rather than intentional deception. In these cases you may be given academic counselling. If your work is repeatedly careless, you will be reported for academic misconduct.”

Intentional plagiarism goes straight to “disciplinary proceedings, including an investigation and a hearing”.

Note the hinge in the middle of that quote. A first referencing mess is treated as something to teach you out of. Repetition converts it into misconduct. If you have had a counselling conversation, treat it as the warning it is.

The formal definition covers both states anyway: plagiarism is misrepresenting another’s work as your own “either intentionally or unintentionally”.

What an acknowledgement must contain

Where AI use is permitted, UQ’s library guide sets out five elements:

• The AI tool — “e.g. Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini”.
• A description of how you used it — “edited/corrected/translated/ planned/brainstormed”.
• The prompts used.
• The part, section or page of the assessment affected.
• The date.

UQ also publishes a downloadable AI acknowledgement coversheet template, which is more than most universities offer. The prompts are the element you cannot reconstruct later, so save conversations as you go.

And note how wide the obligation is:

“You must acknowledge where you used AI in assessment, including where you have directly quoted or paraphrased AI-generated content or used tools to summarise readings, brainstorm ideas, plan your process, or for editing or proofreading purposes.”

Editing and proofreading are inside the obligation at UQ, not outside it. That is stricter than Birmingham’s carve-out and worth adjusting to. Our AI disclosure statement guide covers the wording; at UQ, use the coversheet.

Research students get a separate instruction: “If you are a Higher Degree by Research student, consult your advisor before using AI tools in the research and writing of your thesis.”

Rewriting tools are named

We should flag this, since it concerns the category our own product sits in. UQ’s definition of plagiarism includes:

“Paraphrasing a paper from a source text, whether in manuscript, printed or electronic form (e.g. article spinning, text rewriting and content creation tools), without appropriate acknowledgement.”

The qualifier matters — “without appropriate acknowledgement” — so this is about disclosure and authorisation rather than a blanket ban. But combined with the library guidance above, the safe reading at UQ is simple: if a tool touched your text, say so, using the five elements and the coversheet.

Our own check marks filler, hedging and tired transitions in your own sentences and suggests plainer wording; nothing is rewritten for you. That is a lighter touch than a text rewriter — but at UQ it is still editing assistance, so it belongs in your acknowledgement, and your course profile governs whether it is permitted at all.

Sanctions

Contract cheating is defined against the national legislation — a “Contract Cheating Service” includes “an academic cheating service as defined in the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act 2011 (Cth)” — and UQ separately makes it misconduct to aid such a service “by providing materials to” it. Uploading your own completed assignments to a study-sharing site is the everyday way students fall into that.

A Misconduct Committee’s general-misconduct penalties include suspension of up to two weeks, probationary enrolment, a campus service order, compensation of up to $1,000, directions to undertake remedial or educational activities or counselling, and a written warning or reprimand; the academic-misconduct penalties sit in the same policy.

UQ also runs an Honour Code, which “sits alongside the Student Code of Conduct Policy… complements the policy, but doesn’t replace it.”

UQ does not publish annual case counts, so nobody can tell you how often any of this happens.

Before you submit

• Ask for the draft submission. The procedure says you should have it where possible.
• Read the AI section of your course profile. It is mandatory content, and it is the rule that binds you.
• Acknowledge editing and proofreading use. At UQ that is inside the obligation.
• Save your prompts. They are one of the five required elements.
• Do not upload your assignments to study-sharing sites. Providing materials to a cheating service is separately listed.
• Take a first referencing warning seriously. Repetition converts poor practice into misconduct.

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 — but at UQ, use the draft Turnitin submission you are entitled to first, and follow your course profile.

Sources

• UQ: Assessment Procedure — effective 13 July 2026, approved 23 June 2026 by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic); clause 45 on draft submission.
• UQ: Student Code of Conduct Policy — effective 1 January 2026; contains the plagiarism and misconduct definitions, and no mention of AI.
• UQ: Academic integrity and student conduct — the AI writing indicator statement; page carries no date.
• UQ Library: Acknowledging and referencing AI — the five required elements and the coversheet template.

This page is orientation, not legal advice. What binds you is your course profile and UQ’s published policies.