by - Gráinne McNamara, Research Integrity / Publication Ethics Manager, Karger - Silver sponsor of the ALPSP Annual Conference and Awards 2024.
In scholarly publishing, the term ‘research integrity’ is increasingly discussed and its significance to the ecosystem is growing. With the dominance of paper mills in the consciousness of research integrity professionals, matched only by the emerging threat posed by Generative AI, a reoccurring theme has emerged in these discussions: collaboration.
Increasingly, no longer are research integrity teams operating largely in isolation within their respective publishers, interacting only in specific contexts, such as COPE forums or webinars, or when a multi-journal complaint necessitates alignment. Particularly in the last three years, we have seen a diversification in the venues at which research integrity teams interact. In the spirit of the infamously misattributed proverb “If you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far, go together”, this expansion of touchpoints between publishers’ research integrity teams should be expected to have a positive effect on the trustworthiness of the scholarly publishing landscape.
As a medium-sized publisher publishing over 90 journals in the health sciences, with a small research integrity team, Karger Publishers is particularly well placed to see how this growth in collaboration can be beneficial. Reflecting on how this has impacted us and the industry overall, we can see that great progress has been made as well as several trends and areas for growth.
Technology
The most obvious advantage of combining forces for a publisher the size of Karger or for smaller emerging or society publishers is the enhanced availability of new technologies. The STM Integrity Hub was established to foster collaboration “between publishers of all sorts, shapes and sizes”. The development of tools through the hub has enabled the detection of manuscript submission irregularities faster than for each participant operating in isolation. For example, the first-of-its-kind detection of duplicate submissions across publishers via the STM Hub allowed publishers to discover violations of our Editorial Policies early in peer review. By having this information, we ensure peer review resources are directed to compliant submissions, critical at this point when peer reviewer time is limited. Inter-publisher collaboration for duplicate submission detection received a boost recently with the announcement that Elsevier’s full text analysis for matching manuscripts would be made available to the STM Integrity Hub, making it more difficult for infracting submissions to evade detection. According to this August 2024 announcement, 12 publishers were using this tool, including Karger. The maximum effectiveness of this tool can only be realised by full adoption across publishers, and we hope to see this number grow.
This year we have seen more examples of publishers working together to improve integrity tools. In March 2024, Wiley announced that Sage and IEEE would be partnering in the testing of their Papermill Detection service. While neither Sage nor IEEE could be classified as a small or medium-sized publisher, this collaboration perpetuates the growing trend of technology sharing between publishers for mutual benefit that we can expect to see continue.
Information
A challenge for any research integrity team in 2024 is keeping up to date with the latest developments and threats across the industry. Here again, we are seeing how collaboration is supporting the work, particularly of smaller teams, allowing them to focus on maintaining the integrity of the scholarly record while staying informed. The COPE and STM study into the scale and impact of paper mills on publishers in 2022, to which Karger contributed data and information, marked the beginning of an increasingly collaborative effort to combat paper mills. This translated into a COPE working group on the topic, of which Karger is a member, continuing to this year’s at the World Conference of Research Integrity where paper mills were one of the key topics of discussion. Open communication between affected parties about paper mills will need to continue as long as the threat exists as publishers of all sizes try to stay ahead through the newest information and trends.
An abundance of new research integrity tools have become available in the last 3 years to help publishers uphold the highest integrity standards, no matter their scale of operation. However, testing and piloting new technologies is a time-consuming necessity for research integrity teams. In addition to the collaborative information sharing we’ve seen through the STM Integrity Hub duplicate submission detection, the Hub's Image Alteration and Duplications Working Group supports the community by providing an overview of the available image integrity tools and their features, allowing publishers to make informed decisions and comparisons between available products. In a sea of information, crowd-sourcing trusted information can make the difference for a small or medium-sized publisher to save time that can be invested into misconduct detection.
Expertise
A product of information and technology sharing is the enhanced expertise of research integrity professionals at publishers, as well as in those working more broadly in the scholarly communication ecosystem with an interest in research integrity. COPE has long been a hub of experience sharing between members and in 2024 this continued with the launch of formal Advisor roles for volunteers to share knowledge and expertise. We have also started to see the development of subject-specialised expertise-sharing collaboration. In the physical sciences, three publishers established the ‘Purpose-led Publishing’ initiative in which participants defined and committed to “a set of industry standards that underpin high-quality, ethical scholarly communication”. Whether we will see more examples of subject-specialised publishers of various sizes coming together to define standards for their area remains to be seen.
On the other end of the specialisation spectrum, the United2Act initiative, of which Karger is a signatory and member of Working Group 2, is a prime example of the wider research integrity community coming together and translating expertise and leveraging technology into tangible outcomes to combat the threat of paper mills. Furthermore, many of the groups’ outputs, for example, educational resources and trust marker development, are likely to have benefits far beyond the initial scope of paper mills.
Taking the lessons learned from publisher-publisher communication to the wider research integrity community is an integral step in embedding research integrity throughout the scholarly communication cycle. At Karger, we have seen the benefits of collaborating with larger and smaller publishers in improving our detection capabilities and expertise. We plan to continue, with our colleagues across publishers and other organizations with an interest in research integrity, collaborating to advance upholding research integrity standards. Naturally, the benefits of collaboration are not limited to strengthening research integrity. A recent blog in this series provided a view from the publishing systems perspective on the necessity and benefits of collaboration. We will undoubtedly see publisher-publisher and publisher-systems collaboration grow in the coming years as bad actors continue to pose a threat to the integrity of the scholarly record. By actively seeking collaboration, publishers of all sizes can build on each other’s technology, information and expertise of each other and go far and fast, together.
About the author
Dr. Gráinne McNamara is the Research Integrity / Publication Ethics Manager at Karger Publishers, where she and her team are engaged in developing research integrity policies, conducting investigations and advising researchers on best practice.
She has worked in research integrity in publishing since 2017 and is grateful to all the researchers and colleagues who have, and continue to, share their experience and expertise in that time.
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