Terms of Service
These terms apply to everyone who uses Supervision Board: students, supervisors, examiners and university staff. By signing in you agree to them and to your university's own policies on research, academic integrity and the use of IT systems, which take precedence where they differ.
1. The service
Supervision Board, operated by Supervision Board, helps universities manage postgraduate supervision: submitting drafts, giving and responding to feedback, tracking revisions and milestones, checking references, and communicating about research progress. Your university arranges access and decides who may use the platform.
2. Accounts and sign-in
- Accounts are created by invitation or registration approved by your university. Use only your own account.
- You may sign in with a password or with your university Microsoft (Office 365) account. Keep your credentials secure and do not share them.
- Tell your university or supervisor promptly if you think someone else has accessed your account.
- You are responsible for activity under your account.
3. Acceptable use
Use the platform only for legitimate academic supervision. You must not:
- upload material that is unlawful, defamatory, infringes someone else's rights, or that you are not permitted to share;
- upload confidential research data, participants' identifiable information, or third-party material unless your ethics approval and data-management plan allow it;
- access, or try to access, other people's accounts, records or data without authorisation;
- interfere with the platform's security or operation, including scraping, overloading or probing it for vulnerabilities;
- harass, threaten or discriminate against others through messages or feedback.
4. Your content
You keep ownership of the work you upload, and supervisors keep ownership of their feedback, subject to your university's intellectual-property policy. You allow the platform to store, display, copy and process that content as needed to provide the service to you, your supervisors and authorised university staff, including keeping earlier versions and the history of feedback as part of the supervision record.
5. Academic integrity
Work you submit must be your own and comply with your university's academic-integrity rules. The platform keeps a record of versions, feedback and responses; this record may be used by your university in supervision, progress review and, where necessary, integrity processes.
6. AI assistance
- Some features use AI (Claude, by Anthropic) to suggest feedback, summarise outstanding issues, or explain feedback in plain language. AI output can be wrong or incomplete.
- AI suggestions are reviewed by a person before they reach a student, and accepted AI-assisted content is labelled as such. Academic judgements and decisions remain with supervisors and examiners.
- Students must not present AI-generated text as their own where their university's rules do not allow it. Explanations of feedback are for understanding, not for copying into a thesis.
7. Reference checks and indicators
Reference checks compare citations with public bibliographic records. A reference marked "requires attention" could not be verified automatically; this does not mean it is fabricated. Progress indicators and engagement patterns are signals to support a conversation, not assessments of anyone's ability or performance, and must not be used as the sole basis for decisions about a student or a supervisor.
8. Privacy
How personal information is handled is explained in the Privacy Statement, which forms part of these terms.
9. Availability and changes
We aim to keep the platform available and secure, but it may occasionally be unavailable for maintenance or for reasons outside our control. Keep your own copies of important work. We may improve or change features over time and will update these terms when needed; the date above shows the latest version. Continued use after an update means you accept the revised terms.
10. Liability
The platform supports, but does not replace, the professional judgement of supervisors and the processes of your university. To the extent permitted by law, Supervision Board is not liable for indirect or consequential loss, for decisions made by users or universities, or for loss caused by content users upload. Nothing in these terms limits rights you have under the Consumer Protection Act or other law that cannot be excluded.
11. Suspension and ending access
Access may be suspended or ended if these terms or university policies are breached, if your registration or appointment ends, or at your university's request. Records may be kept afterwards as described in the Privacy Statement.
12. Governing law and contact
These terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of South Africa.
You can also contact your supervisor, programme administrator or your university's IT or research office.