Online tools will help publishers detect fake research papers. Credit: Getty Publishers is testing prototypes of automated systems to flag submitted manuscripts with the mark of paper machines — businesses producing fake research papers.
The tools, which will eventually form part of the integrity of the Internet hub, are the result of a year-long collaboration between 24 publishers and providers of scholarly statistics.
Together, companies are trying to end the growing scourge of science fiction articles. Paper submissions to journals have increased dramatically over the past few years, said Jana Christopher, an image integrity analyst at FEBS Press in Heidelberg, Germany.
“If we don’t do anything about this, the books will become really unreliable,” he said. We can’t afford that.” Fighting pseudoscience In recent years, journals have retracted hundreds of papers out of fear that the work contained fabricated data and images.
As a result, publishers have been trying to strengthen their defenses to prevent such papers from entering their distribution systems. A number of private companies have emerged offering software that can detect potentially fraudulent images or flagging features that suggest a paper shredder.
‘Paper alarm’ software flags potentially fake papers Since 2020, the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM) – a global trade organization based in The Hague, Netherlands – has been working with publishing companies developing shared software standards.
able to identify potential problems with images during peer review. It announced in December 2021 that it will develop the STM Integrity Hub, which will provide tools that allow editors of any publisher to check submitted articles for research integrity issues.
Companies participating in this program include BMJ, Elsevier, Frontiers, IOP Publishing, the JAMA Network, Sage Publishing, Taylor & Francis, Wiley and Springer Nature (The Nature news team is independent of its publisher).
A small group is now testing prototypes for two of the three proposed devices. STM declined to name the publishers involved in the study and says it is too early to have meaningful data on the tools’ performance. ‘Tip of the iceberg’ Nature understands that Elsevier, Taylor & Francis and Frontiers are among those testing prototypes. .Sabina Alam, director of publishing ethics and integrity at Taylor & Francis, says allegations about paper mills account for almost half of all ethical cases a publisher faces.
“The problem is not only important because of the volume, but also because there are different types of paper mills, and they are all very flexible. Therefore, investigating the issues that exist in the field of sand dynamics poses many challenges.
PLOS Publisher San Francisco, California. “A single paper mill case can affect tens, hundreds or thousands of articles for many publishers.” The integrity hub’s first tool works by scanning documents for more than 70 signals that can indicate a manuscript was produced by a paper mill.
Those involved remain tight-lipped about what those signs are, so as not to discount fraudsters. But previous public work has raised red flags such as formulaic article titles and layouts, bar charts with similar profiles that claim to represent data from different experiments, author email addresses that look suspicious or unusual turns of phrase that could indicate the use of automatic translation.
software Duplicate submissions The second tool is designed to alert editors when someone has submitted a paper to several journals at the same time. Paper grinders use this strategy to try to get papers accepted more quickly (it is considered inappropriate to submit a complete manuscript to multiple journals at once).
Christopher says withdrawing the duplicate post would be a “really big and important step” in dealing with it. paper mills. Previously, journals had no way of knowing whether a paper they might be considering for publication was being reviewed elsewhere. Publishers unite to tackle copyrighted images in research papers Sharing data securely between publishers is a legal issue, due to data processing and anti-competition laws.
Manuscripts that researchers submit to journals are confidential, and cannot be easily shared between journals and publishers. But the hub takes a series of technical steps to collect only small snippets from publishers. “The hub works in such a way that information can be linked and compared to each other,” said Hylke Koers, who runs STM Solutions – the subsidiary of STM that developed the hub. Information will also be encrypted for security.
Such cooperation between publishers is important, says Elena Vica, head of integrity research at the accessible publishing company Frontiers in Lausanne, Switzerland. He says: “If we don’t work together, the issue may only be moved from one journal or one publisher to another.” The last technical aspect of the hub will be analysis software available that can see the modified images in the manuscripts.
Editorial help Joris van Rossum, director of research integrity at STM, says the organization hopes to have versions of paper shredder detection and duplicating alerts available for widespread use by early next year. Applications will be supported instead of replacing the editors. and peer reviewers, says Nicola Nugent, publishing manager of quality and ethics at the Royal Society of Chemistry in London, who is involved in developing the hub.
Alerts will still need to be done by humans, but some level of automation is important, because “publishers tend to operate at a critical level, checking high volumes of submissions”, he says. Along with online tools, STM works with them. the Committee on Publication Ethics, an advisory body based in Eastleigh, UK, to provide publishers with guidance and policies on how to deal with integrity issues.
It produces a series of workshops for publishers to share knowledge and learn from each other. Up until now, the center has been funded by an initial, undisclosed, investment by STM. Next year, the company will seek voluntary funding from members of the institute and look at how to make the project financially sustainable.
“It’s too early to speculate, but we expect to recoup at least half of the operating costs through the fee to integrate the facility into publishers’ editorial plans,” van Rossum said.
