Ethics
Our ethics policy
What we do, where our help stops, and why you must be able to defend every page.
A PhD is a qualification in doing research yourself. Your thesis carries a declaration that it is your own work, and you will defend it in person before examiners. Any help you receive has to leave that declaration true.
So the line we draw is simple to state: we support your research, and you remain the researcher. We do the kind of work a good supervisor, editor, statistician or methods advisor would do, so your declaration stays true. This page sets out, in concrete terms, what that means.
Within the line
What we will do
- Help you find and refine a topic, and test whether a research gap is real
- Review and advise on your research design, sampling, instruments and analysis plan
- Help you structure chapters and arguments, and give detailed feedback on your drafts
- Edit language, clarity and consistency, with tracked changes you accept or reject
- Check references against their sources and format them to the required style
- Run and explain statistical or qualitative analysis on data you collected, with reproducible scripts
- Build or debug simulations and code for your method, documented so you can explain every part
- Prepare manuscripts for a journal’s requirements, and help you respond to reviewers
- Explain your similarity report and help you fix citation problems and rewrite your own text
- Prepare you for your viva with question practice and a mock viva
Beyond the line
Outside the scope of our work
- Creating, altering or selectively deleting data, or writing survey responses or interviews
- Adjusting analysis to reach significance, or reporting only selected runs
- Supplying pre-written theses or papers, or presenting others’ work as yours
- Using paraphrasing tools, character substitution or hidden text on similarity checkers
- Adding ourselves or anyone else as authors, or arranging authorship positions on papers
- Submitting to journals from our accounts, or corresponding with journals in your name
- Placing papers in journals that are predatory, hijacked or clone sites
- Attending, prompting or answering on your behalf in a viva, seminar, exam or interview
- Promising publication, acceptance, a similarity score or a result
Judgement calls
The grey areas, answered
Not everything is black and white. Here is how we handle the questions that come up most.
How much editing is too much?
Editing improves how your ideas are expressed; it should not change what the ideas are. We use tracked changes so every edit is visible, and we query rather than rewrite where the meaning is unclear. If a passage needs rewriting from scratch, we explain what needs to change and help you rewrite it.
Should I tell my supervisor?
We think you should be able to. Many universities permit, and some expect, acknowledgement of editorial, statistical or language help, and we’ll help you word an acknowledgement if you want one. If you would feel unable to tell your supervisor about the help you’re getting, that is worth taking seriously.
Can you analyse data I haven’t collected yet?
We can help you plan the analysis, and design and pilot the instrument. Data collection is yours. Analysis runs on data you have collected, and we tell you clearly which conclusions the data support.
What about AI tools?
Our reviewers and editors do all the writing and editing themselves. Spell and grammar checkers are used as ordinary editing tools. If you use AI tools yourself, check your university’s and the journal’s current policy, since many require you to disclose it. Before citing a reference an AI tool suggests, find and read the source.
What if my similarity score is high?
We start by reading the report properly. Often the “similarity” is unquoted quotations or missing citations, which are straightforward to fix. Where your own text sits too close to a source, we work with you to rewrite and cite it properly, so every change is a real revision of the text. Our guide to plagiarism limits explains the UGC rules.
In practice
What happens if a request falls outside this policy
We explain where it falls and suggest what we can do instead. There is usually a legitimate way to help with the underlying problem. If we find during an engagement that work has crossed the line (for example, data that appears to have been fabricated), we stop that part of the work and talk to you about it. Our terms allow us to end an engagement for this reason, with a refund for any stage not yet delivered.
If you believe we have acted outside this policy, please tell us at [email protected]. We take it seriously and will reply in writing.
Research support, inside the line
If what you need fits within this policy, we’d be glad to talk. If you’re not sure whether it does, ask us and we’ll give you a clear answer.
Book a free consultation