Ethics
Our ethics policy
What we do, where our help stops, and why you must be able to defend every page.
A PhD certifies that you can do research on your own. At the end you sign a declaration in the thesis saying the work is yours, and you face the examiners in person at the viva-voce. Any help you take, that signature should still be honest after it.
Our rule is easy to say. We help with your research, but the researcher is you only. We do the work a good guide, editor, statistician or methods advisor would do, so your declaration stays correct. We wrote this policy in plain words so you and us both know from start what is agreed.
Within the line
What we will do
- Help with finding and sharpening a topic, and checking if the research gap is real
- Look at your research design, sampling, instruments and analysis plan, and give advice on them
- Help structure chapters and arguments, with detailed comments on each draft
- Language editing for clarity and consistency, in tracked changes you accept or reject
- Checking references against their sources and formatting them in the required style
- Training and checking for the statistical or qualitative analysis you run on your own data, with every step explained
- One-to-one MATLAB and Python sessions, and review and debugging help on the code you write for your method
- Checking your manuscript against the journal’s requirements, explaining reviewer comments and reviewing the reply you write
- Explaining your similarity report, fixing citation and quotation problems, and giving feedback while you rework your own text
- Viva preparation, with practice questions and a mock viva
Beyond the line
Outside the scope of our work
- Making up, changing or selectively deleting data, or writing survey responses or interviews
- Changing the analysis till it reaches significance, or reporting only the runs that look good
- Writing theses, chapters, papers, assignments or response letters, giving ready-made work, or passing off someone else’s work as yours
- Rewriting or paraphrasing your text to lower a similarity or AI-detection score, or swapping characters and hiding text to fool checkers
- Putting our name or anybody else’s as an author, or fixing authorship positions on papers
- Submitting to journals from our own accounts, or writing to journals in your name
- Sending papers to predatory journals, hijacked journals or clone sites
- Sitting in, prompting you or answering for you in a viva, seminar, exam or interview
- Any promise of publication, acceptance, a similarity score or a particular result
Judgement calls
The grey areas, answered
Some questions don’t have a clean yes or no. These are the ones scholars ask us most.
How much editing is too much?
Our editor may change your words here and there. Your idea we leave as it is, that part belongs to you. We put every change in tracked changes mode, so you can go through them one by one. If we can’t follow a sentence, we ask you, we don’t guess. And if some paragraph needs full rewriting, we tell you what is wrong and you rewrite it with our help.
Should I tell my supervisor?
Our view is that you should be able to tell your guide. Many universities allow an acknowledgement of editorial, statistical or language help, and some expect it. We can help word it. Also, if you feel you could not tell your supervisor about the help you are taking, don’t ignore that feeling.
Can you analyse data I haven’t collected yet?
We can help plan the analysis, and design and pilot the instrument. Collecting the data is your part only. You run the analysis on the data you collected. We check it, explain it, and tell you plainly which conclusions that data can support and which it cannot.
What about AI tools?
Our reviewers write their own comments and our editors make their own edits, without AI rewriting tools. Spell and grammar checkers we use like any editor does. If you are using AI tools in your own work, check the current policy of your university and of the journal. Many of them ask you to disclose it. Sometimes an AI tool gives a reference which is not there in any database. Open that paper and read it yourself before you cite.
What if my similarity score is high?
First we read the report properly. Many times the report show “similarity” that is only quotations without quote marks, or citations that are missing. Fixing those is easy. In some places your own text may be too close to a source. There we show you the problem and you rewrite it and cite it correctly, so each change is a real revision of your own text. The UGC rules are explained in our guide to plagiarism limits.
In practice
What happens if a request falls outside this policy
We tell you which part is outside the line and suggest what we can do instead. Mostly there is a fair way to help with the real problem. Once in a while we notice mid-way that a job has crossed the line. One example is data that looks like it has been made up. When that happens we stop that part of work and discuss about it with you. As per our terms we can end the work for this reason, and any stage not yet delivered is refunded.
If you feel we have gone outside this policy anywhere, write to us at [email protected]. We will look into it seriously and send you a reply in writing.
Research support, inside the line
If your need fits inside this policy, we are happy to talk. Not sure if it fits? Ask us, and we will tell you clearly.
Book a free consultation