Safeguarding Research Integrity with Technology and Innovation
We’re implementing tools to help maintain research integrity by spotting paper mills, plagiarism and misconduct in peer review.
September is a highlight in our calendar, as we mark Peer Review Week [external link] – an annual, community-led event to celebrate the pivotal role of peer review in ensuring publication of high quality science.
The choice of 2024’s theme, “Innovation and Technology in Peer Review”, is timely: artificial intelligence tools are being adopted by authors and publishers, bringing both benefits and challenges for peer review and research integrity. As technology develops, peer review workflows are rapidly changing to support the needs of authors and reviewers.
A sample of iThenticate’s Similarity Report
Tools to support research integrity
Our own peer review workflows are similarly evolving. In 2023 we implemented gold-standard technological tools to support our journal editorial teams in performing research integrity checks.
These include the introduction of integrity flags into the iThenticate Similarity Reports, which aid our ability to spot attempts by paper mills or users to trick the system and pass off plagiarised wording as their own.
For those who are curious, techniques being used to trick plagiarism tools may include use of hidden quotation marks to misconstrue the amount of appropriately-attributed material, or even replacing characters with those from different alphabets to disrupt the system’s ability to spot similarity with published work.
We’re also trialling ScholarOne’s Unusual Activity Detection tool, developed by Clarivate, in Australian Journal of Chemistry to help our editors detect key markers of potential misconduct in peer review. The tool’s algorithm assesses manuscripts for aspects such as a short turn-around time for submitted reviews, close-proximity and IP address of authors and reviewers, and can also identify if the same computer is being used to make multiple submissions or reviews on behalf of other users – potentially suggesting activity by a paper mill or other rogue actor. We look forward to extending the use of this tool to our other journals in coming months.
These are just a small sample of the tools and enhancements that we plan to adopt to ensure our peer review workflows are optimised, to support our editorial teams to be confident of the integrity of the research.
Alice Hall, Head of Journals Editorial and Research Integrity
Working proactively to meet the challenges of ethical publishing
To further support this work, we have created a role to steer our journals on issues related to emerging research integrity challenges.
In this position, Alice Hall, Head of Journals Editorial and Research Integrity, works closely with internal and external teams to prevent and tackle issues arising from publishing misconduct.
“Even as a relatively small publisher, we have faced challenges in the integrity of our published papers from time to time,” says Alice. “When these issues arise, they are often complex, and take substantial time to investigate and resolve. I am excited to expand my role and work proactively to meet the challenges of ethical publishing and help to safeguard the integrity of the fantastic research we publish.
As I lead the pre-acceptance area of the Journals team, I have a particular interest in early identification of potential misconduct through adapting our submission system to meet this challenge. By investing in technology and tools to detect research-integrity-offending manuscripts, we hope to prevent issues arising further down the track, which are much harder to resolve.”
Drawing on global knowledge and experience
We are supported to navigate ethics concerns through our membership of key publishing organisations such as International Association of STM Publishers [external link] and Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) [external link], as well as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) [external link].
In May 2024, Journal Publisher Brietta Pike attended the SSP Annual Meeting in Boston, MA, where the scholarly publishing community gathered to reflect on the challenges facing the industry. Research integrity was a dominant theme at the meeting, including the proliferation of paper mills and bad actors in scientific publishing, and the opportunities and challenges of AI for securing research integrity.
Our involvement in these discussions provides important ‘intel’ for our strategic planning – learning through the experiences shared by other publishers, and from industry initiatives such as the STM Integrity Hub – a knowledge exchange to support research integrity in science. We look forward to expanding our participation in the coming months.