Research Integrity Archives - STM Association

The STM Integrity Hub: 2.5 years in | Scholarly Kitchen

stmassoc — Thu, 23 May 2024 12:07:04 +0000

It’s been 2.5 years since the launch of the STM Integrity Hub, and the progress made has been remarkable, thanks to a truly collaborative effort. With over 35 supporting organizations and more than 100 participants from various working groups and task forces, the STM Integrity Hub stands as a testament to the power of community in advancing research integrity. Get up to speed with the latest developments in this recent The Scholarly Kitchen article by STM’s own Joris Van Rossum, Program Director of STM Solutions.

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Manuscript Manager joins STM Integrity Hub

stmassoc — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 00:32:14 +0000

Jan 8, 2024 – THE HAGUE, Netherlands: STM Solutions today announced the integration of Manuscript Manager, a peer review system for academic journals, into the STM Integrity Hub. This integration enables publishers to establish automated feeds of their submitted content to the Hub. Here, the content is screened for various integrity issues, such as submissions to multiple journals simultaneously, references to retracted works, and manuscripts generated by paper mills. This latest integration, closely following the integration of Editorial Manager and ScholarOne into the Integrity Hub, represents an important milestone. It allows for more journals to safely and confidentially share data, thereby improving the capabilities to look for patterns that are indicative of research integrity concerns across journals and publishers, which is crucial to safeguarding the integrity of the scholarly record.

Joris van Rossum, Product Director of the Integrity Hub, comments: “Since the STM Integrity Hub was launched two years ago, we have seen 35 organizations join — publishers as well as other infrastructure and service providers such as editorial systems. Manuscript Manager allows us many other publishers to join the STM Integrity Hub, forming an even wider ecosystem of organizations sharing data to collectively combat research fraud.”

Andy Beare, CEO of Manuscript Manager, is delighted to be a collaborator in the STM Integrity Hub projects. “These initiatives are important in ensuring high standards and confidence in scholarly publications for the academic community. Our customers will also benefit from having access to real-time reports and alerts as part of an automated and efficient process.”

The STM Integrity Hub, founded by STM members and developed by STM Solutions, helps publishers to safeguard research integrity. It allows publishers of all sizes to share data and experiences and offers a variety of tools to identify and respond to materials that violate established standards of quality, ethics, and integrity. In April 2023, the Integrity Hub released the MVP of a paper mill detection tool designed to flag indicators suggesting a manuscript originated from a paper mill, followed by the October launch of a pilot program for detecting duplicate submissions. These tools will be further developed in 2024 and made available to publishers as widely as possible.

About STM
The International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM) is a nonprofit foundation dedicated to advancing trusted research worldwide. STM consists of over 140 members in the academic publishing industry. The STM Integrity Hub is a collaboration between STM member publishers to support research integrity through data, intelligence and technology.

About Manuscript Manager
Manuscript Manager is a modern peer review platform for publishers in search of a budget-and-user-friendly manuscript submission and peer review software solution. Based in Copenhagen, the company currently supports 450+ academic journals and book projects in over 40 countries.

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STM Integrity Hub launches new research integrity tool

stmassoc — Thu, 12 Oct 2023 12:45:38 +0000

Pilot program will detect duplicate submissions that may indicate paper mill activity

Oct. 12, 2023 – THE HAGUE, Netherlands. STM Solutions today announced the launch of a pilot program to detect duplicate submissions to scholarly publications. Submitting the same manuscript to multiple journals simultaneously is, in most cases, against publisher policies and often indicates the work of paper mills, which produce and sell fraudulent research.

This workflow, part of the STM Integrity Hub, represents the first time duplicate submissions can be detected across different journals, publishers, and submission systems while upholding robust confidentiality and privacy standards. IEEE, IOP Publishing, ACS Publications, Taylor & Francis, Sage, and PeerJ are among the publishers who have already signed on.

“The journal ecosystem is very siloed in nature, which has been exploited by paper mills and other bad actors spamming journals with identical, often fake manuscripts,” Hylke Koers, CIO of STM Solutions, said. “The duplicate submissions workflow represents a milestone in collaboration between academic publishers, marking the first moment that we are able to automatically detect duplicate submissions across different publishers and editorial systems. We expect more publishers and journals will join this pilot soon, which we expect will evolve into an important tool against systematic misuse.”

The STM Integrity Hub, which was founded by STM members and developed by STM Solutions, safeguards research integrity by allowing publishers of all sizes to share data and experiences and offering a variety of tools to identify and respond to materials that violate standards. Most recently, in April, the Integrity Hub released the MVP of a paper mill detection tool designed to flag several indicators that suggest a manuscript originated from a paper mill.

Tony Alves, senior VP at HighWire Press and chair of the Duplicate Submissions Working Group, expressed excitement about this pivotal move to eliminate publishing misinformation. “It is fulfilling to see that the industry has come together to tackle the challenges of misinformation and fake science by building a collaborative infrastructure that flags suspect material early on in the publishing workflow. Much hard work went into defining policies and procedures that safeguard confidentiality and protect research interests while screening for duplicate submissions, and I am happy to see we are now moving into this phase.”

About STM

The International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM) is a nonprofit foundation dedicated to advancing trusted research worldwide. STM consists of over 140 members in the academic publishing industry. The STM Integrity Hub is a collaboration between STM member publishers to support research integrity through data, intelligence and technology.

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Integrity Hub continues to gain momentum with inclusion of PubPeer database in screening tool

stmassoc — Thu, 21 Sep 2023 02:42:07 +0000

STM Solutions and PubPeer are pleased to announce the integration of the PubPeer database with the STM Integrity Hub. This newest collaboration continues to strengthen the Hub’s ability to identify potentially deceptive manuscripts upon submission, and comes directly on the heels of another integration announced earlier this month. Designed by STM Solutions, the Hub represents a pooling of new and existing technology, policy, insights, and best practices to further safeguard research integrity.

PubPeer is a website where users can discuss and review scientific research post-publication. The integration with the STM Integrity Hub allows users to check if references listed in submitted manuscripts concern articles that have received comments in PubPeer or were marked as retracted, an important indicator of quality and a possible indication of integrity issues.

Brandon Stell, president of the PubPeer Foundation said, “We are pleased to work with STM to make the expert commentary of the PubPeer community available to a broad consortium of publishers and look forward to developing our collaboration.”

The STM Integrity Hub is a collaborative effort led by STM Solutions to equip the scholarly communication community with data, intelligence, and technology to protect research integrity. As part of this mission, the program is developing and making available technology for publishers to detect potential breaches of research integrity as soon as possible after a manuscript has been submitted for publication.

It has been roughly six months since the Hub launched a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) of its first application: a paper mill checker tool designed to identify manuscripts created by so-called paper mills. It is currently in use by several publishers. Building on this momentum, the Clear Skies Papermill Alarm Public tool was integrated into this paper mill checker tool earlier this month, a development complemented with the addition of the PubPeer database.

“In recent years, we have witnessed the emergence of important tools and databases developed by the academic community that can support publishers in identifying problematic submissions. Integrating these in the paper mill checker tool is part of the mission of the STM Integrity Hub, and we are excited to collaborate with this important initiative,” said Joris van Rossum, Product Director of the STM Integrity Hub.

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STM Integrity Hub incorporates Clear Skies’ Papermill Alarm screening tool

stmassoc — Fri, 01 Sep 2023 04:25:37 +0000

STM Solutions and Clear Skies are pleased to announce the integration of the Clear Skies Papermill Alarm with the STM Integrity Hub. This integration further strengthens the Hub’s capability to pinpoint potentially fraudulent manuscripts at the time of submission. Designed by STM Solutions, the Hub represents a pooling of new and existing technology, policy, and best practices to further safeguard research integrity.

The Clear Skies Papermill Alarm is a tool that offers a straightforward traffic-light rating system for research papers. A red alert indicates a high-similarity to known papermill-product content, an orange alert suggests a moderate similarity, and a green rating indicates no resemblance to such papers. The Papermill Alarm ratings help publishers direct limited resources to the papers that warrant it. The integration with the STM Integrity Hub pertains to the ‘Public’ version of the Papermill Alarm tool, which was launched in 2022 and is optimized for the general area of cancer research.

The STM Integrity Hub is a collaborative effort, led by STM Solutions, to equip the scholarly communication community with data, intelligence, and technology to protect research integrity. As part of this mission, the program is developing and making available technology for publishers to detect potential breaches of research integrity as soon as possible after a manuscript has been submitted for publication.

Earlier this year, the Hub released its first application — a tool to detect manuscripts that are fabricated by so-called paper mills. A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) was announced in April, and is currently in use by several publishers. The Clear Skies Papermill Alarm Public tool has now been integrated into this paper mill detection tool on a strictly opt-in basis, offering participating publishers the option to benefit from a greater array of indicators to determine if a submitted manuscript is suspicious and requires further investigation. “Through integrations with tools developed by third parties such as Clear Skies, we are simplifying the workflow for publishers, and – by combining signals – we are improving the accuracy and precision of detecting fraudulent submissions, said Hylke Koers, CIO of STM Solutions. “We see this as a way to support and accelerate the development of Research Integrity screening technology by other service providers to the benefit of the entire sector.”

Adam Day, director of Clear Skies, commented: “We are delighted to be working with STM Solutions. This collaboration helps put our technology in the hands of publishers where it prevents research fraud from entering the peer-review system”.

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Peer Review Terminology Standardization

stmassoc — Mon, 21 Aug 2023 23:57:04 +0000

[Cross-posted from NISO.org, July 2023]

Peer review is the process of evaluating academic, scientific, or professional work. It is ubiquitously used by academic journals to support research integrity by filtering out invalid or poor-quality articles, as well as to ensure that research outcomes are exposed to relevant audiences through their publication in relevant journals. As such, it is a crucial process in scholarly communication and a pillar of the scientific method.

Over recent decades, a significant number of new peer review models have been introduced (most notably for open review), but they have not been accompanied by the development of a clear and consistent nomenclature, leading to confusion. There is also increased support for more openness and transparency in science and research, including peer review, in order to maintain trust in the scholarly ecosystem.

Against this background, in 2019, STM (the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers) recognized the need to support the community in ensuring greater transparency and openness in peer review, which is an essential element of open research. This support includes harmonizing and better communicating definitions of discrete elements of these processes, so that members of the community—whether they be authors, reviewers, editors or readers—can quickly and easily recognize how to more productively participate in the creation and qualification of scholarly content.

Learn more here.

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Perspectives on Data sharing in the Humanities: Don Shelton

stmassoc — Thu, 04 May 2023 13:41:30 +0000

Don Shelton is an independent researcher in the humanities, based in New Zealand. While his research has been published in traditional formats including academic journals, his main focus is on publishing extensive blogposts, annotations, field notes and images on his research-focused website. His reasons for doing so align with the commonly cited benefits of research data sharing: to encourage others to freely use and expand upon his research; to avoid data loss in the case of hardware failure; and “give back” in acknowledgement of the Open Access sources that he has found useful in his own research process.

In this blog he reflects on his experiences in accessing online resources to support his research, and how the development of his website led him to consider the importance of quality and accessibility in sharing his research materials online.

Hello Don, could you please introduce yourself and tell us about your research?

I am now retired, but my career was in senior, decision-making executive roles, which required detailed, methodical and logical analysis, which frequently arrived at decisions in conflict with corporate “conventional wisdom”; thus I became sceptical of conventional wisdom. In parallel, I had an interest in philately, family history, and the artists and sitters in a collection of miniature portraits. Research techniques developed from those activities, now focus on art, literature, and medicine of the long 18th century: by drawing on contemporary original sources, especially those available on the Internet.

Being retired, I do not have academic career, or monetary objectives, hence my prime focus is pure research, and sharing of open access conclusions, with a maximum number of people, for the benefit of all students – together with belated recognition for the 18th century author Tobias Smollett.

What has been your experience of data sharing in the humanities? Have there been positive outcomes?

Firstly, the negative experiences: An independent researcher lacks university support; hence it was initially difficult to publish research, although gradually easier as research credibility is gained when papers are published. From my research using 18th century sources online, I reluctantly derived a distrust of “academic wisdom”, as promulgated in many academic texts. This arose as opinions expressed in text are often in conflict with methodical analysis of original 18th century sources, and tend to promulgate and perpetuate previous errors. In seeking to share research into art, literature and medicine of this period, I was often dismayed by university disinterest being resistent to any dialogue politely raising queries regarding subjects taught.

Reflecting on the positive experiences, I believe a rising scepticism of academic wisdom and the time delays involved in publishing, necessitated doing “my own thing”: publishing my research notes as an openly accessible blog, available to anyone with Internet access.

To achieve, retain, and emhance research credibility, I believed it essential to include all research material on the blog, even where incomplete. This allows the research to be subject to review by my peers and be presented in a manner logical, accurate, and fully referenced to original sources.

Do you believe that data sharing benefits your own research practice? How?

A significant benefit has been the need to develop clear research habits and discipline , including links to original sources via URL or texts. This, and the inclusion of supporting logic into the blog, has made it easy to “cut, paste, and edit” my draft academic papers.

The more “negative” aspects of data sharing did benefit my research. Scepticism of academic wisdom meant “I was on my own”, but this (coupled with free Internet availability of the 18th century literary sources), seemed like entering an Aladdin’s Cave of treasures!

The use of a user-friendly blog format allows research with minimal website administration. Used with openly accessible Internet sources enabled my research to progress methodically and logically, and an ability to post and share research relying on via standard formatting, spell-check, and URLs to other websites.

By posting on the Internet, there is reduced risk that if my PC crashes, or if anything should happen to me, there an assurance the research notes will continue to be freely available.

Accessing the Internet and sharing information in this way led early research into a late 18th century novel, “The Horrors of Oakendale Abbey,” (previously attributed to Mrs Carver) to reveal it was written by a prominent 19th century surgeon, Sir Anthony Carlisle. Similarly, other research strands have resulted in revisions to prevailing academic wisdom, which are gradually being accepted for peer-review, and publication.

Do you believe that data sharing benefits your research? How?

Data sharing have underpinned the development of my website, comprised of logical, methodical, detailed, and fully referenced material, including URL links. In developing the site, I had the realisation a high standard of quality was required, as anyone, anywhere in the world, could review and critique blog logic, and content. A major benefit of a blog format, is that, as new research arises, it is easy to add to, or amend, previous related posts. That requires quality and discipline and, in turn, is a springboard, enabling easier preparation and submission for peer review, of original research papers.

Do you perceive challenges for humanities researchers in sharing their data? How might we

overcome them?

Academic histories of the long 18th century often rely on facts, traditionally falling under the

broad heading of “conventional wisdom,” which have become elevated to “certain truths” via ongoing

repetition over generations of academia. Then entrenched as ‘inviolable’ facts, by the power of the

printed word, via inclusion in multiple published texts.

Those ‘black and white’ facts are rarely subject to challenge: often due to a perceived academic prominence of the author, sometimes due to a fear of a contentious clamour from peers quoting ‘conventional wisdom’ from weighty texts, or from Thomas/Thomasina Gradgrinds, who have taught conventional wisdom for so many years, they regard any challenge to their long-held and entrenched views as impertinent.

A perception is that some universities, teaching 18C literature, have a vested interest in specifying set-texts authored by their professors, or lecturers, perhaps written a decade or more ago. With a risk those texts may contain material errors and/or discredited logic and opinion. Hence, a related concern that where courses rely on set-texts, students at univesities and schools, may be taught, and examined on, their knowledge of obselete texts. Thereby reinforcing errors, and misdirecting those students .

To counter this risk, it issuggested students interested in 18th century literature should be encouraged, wherever practical, to source and reference their own research direct to available to the openly available digitised sources online.

Don’s website on 18th century English Literature is available to read here: The Lost Works of Tobias Smollett and the War of the Satirists; he has recently published a new eBook, Beneath the Varnish.

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STM Solutions releases MVP of new paper mill detection tool

stmassoc — Thu, 13 Apr 2023 14:00:21 +0000

Today, STM Solutions, the operational arm of STM, announced the release of the MVP (minimal viable product) of a paper mill detection tool as part of the STM Integrity Hub. It is a stand-alone web application where submitted journal manuscripts can be uploaded and checked for a variety of signals indicative of paper mills.

At a high level, this is how the tool works: a publisher uploads a manuscript to the tool, which then scans it for pre-identified indications of potential fraud. If any potential issues with the paper are noted, the system generates a message alerting the research integrity managers and editors, allowing them to investigate and take action if needed.

“The mission of the STM Integrity Hub is to offer a holistic approach to detect manuscripts that offend research integrity through a combination of shared data and experiences, and by harnessing technological innovation,” said STM CEO Caroline Sutton.

“Through shared intelligence and data, collaboration with third parties and a robust platform, we have made an important step with this MVP toward effectively and efficiently responding to the increasing and alarming volume of materials entering scholarly communications that violate accepted research integrity. We look forward to increasing and improving the signals that are used in the paper mill detection tool.”

The tool is fully consistent with applicable laws and industry best practices, and it fully respects the laws and ethics of submission and data privacy. In its current form, the paper mill detection tool contains internally developed tools as well as external tools and databases.

Safeguarding research integrity can only be done through collaboration with all stakeholders in the scholarly ecosystem. STM Solutions worked with several research integrity specialists and organizations for this release, including PubPeer, Clear Skies, Elisabeth Bik and Guillaume Cabanac (pro bono). The STM Integrity Hub hopes to deepen and extend its collaboration with research integrity specialists and organizations going forward.

The MVP is currently available to participating publishers in the STM Integrity Hub. In the future, the tool will be offered to a wider range of publishers and integrated with submissions systems and other workflow systems.

About STM

At STM we support our members in their mission to advance research worldwide. Our 150 members based in over 20 countries around the world collectively publish 66% of all journal articles and tens of thousands of monographs and reference works. As academic and professional publishers, learned societies, university presses, start-ups and established players we work together to serve society by developing standards and technology to ensure research is of high quality, trustworthy and easy to access. We promote the contribution that publishers make to innovation, openness and the sharing of knowledge and embrace change to support the growth and sustainability of the research ecosystem. As a common good, we provide data and analysis for all involved in the global activity of research.

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What a survey of humanities researchers told us about data sharing

stmassoc — Mon, 06 Feb 2023 01:42:17 +0000

Authored by Rebecca Grant, Co-Chair, STM Humanities Research Project

____

Humanities data sharing has lagged behind data sharing in other disciplines (for example life sciences, or social sciences), perhaps for good reason – what exactly is “data” for a historian? How can a physical artefact be shared in a data repository? At the same time, humanities journals tend to have less stringent data sharing policies, rarely mandating that authors share their research data.

As part of the STM Association’s Research Data Program, a group of publishers (including colleagues from Taylor & Francis, Routledge, F1000, Cambridge University Press, Brill, Oxford University Press, Wiley and SAGE, chaired by Matt Cannon (Taylor & Francis), Rebecca Grant (F1000) and Kate McKellar (Wiley) have been working together since 2020 to explore the challenges and opportunities presented by humanities data sharing policies. This led to the development of an author survey which opened for responses in March of this year. This is the first large-scale, targeted survey on humanities data sharing practices that we are aware of.

We were delighted to be invited to write up the results of our survey in the 2022 State of Open Data, which was published in October. The State of Open survey, and associated white paper, represent the longest running longitudinal survey and analysis of open data practices in the world. It’s a hugely impactful publication, and this year’s white paper included invited authors representing the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the Computer Network Information Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The report was published a month ago and has already been viewed nearly 15,000 times. Anyone interested in Open Research and research data sharing should check out the full report, here: the State of Open Data 2022.

But what did we learn about humanities data sharing?

Firstly, we found that just over half of respondents (n=345) believed that “research data” is a term which is applicable to them and their research practice; although while 52% find the term appropriate, nearly half believe that it does not apply to their work either some or all of the time. Other preferred terms suggested by respondents include “research materials,” “information,” “evidence,” and “sources” (figure 1).

Figure 1

A very high proportion (88%) believed that humanities research data should be shared with others, and a majority had shared their data, though most relied on peer-to-peer sharing methods (76% shared data by email) with only 36% sharing via a data repository, which would provide long term preservation and persistent identifiers for citation, representing best practice for data sharing (figure 2).

Figure 2

More training might be necessary to encourage best practices like repository usage: 80% of respondents stated that they had never received training on data sharing. When asked what additional support publishers could provide, guidance on selecting a suitable data repository was the most popular response (43%); in addition, 41% of respondents would like publishers to collaborate more closely with other stakeholders (institutions and libraries) to provide support for data management and sharing.

There’s a lot more to read in the full white paper, but the headline message is that our humanities authors may be more willing than we imagined to identify their sources and outputs as “data” and to share these with their peers.

The group will be building on this work with a series of interviews with humanities editors (currently underway), and we are aiming to publish a longer report on our findings. Please contact the group chairs if you would like any additional information.

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New instructional video series aims to help editors recognize image manipulation

stmassoc — Mon, 28 Nov 2022 11:27:11 +0000

Today, the STM Working Group on Image Alteration and Duplication Detection is launching the first in a series of instructional video modules intended to serve as a tool for scholarly journal editors screening for manipulated images in submitted manuscripts. This first module provides an overview of the most commonly found image aberrations in scientific publications and illustrates how they may be detected and verified.

The video is freely available to all; and the aim is to share it as widely as possible with journal editors.

This first module covers the most common types of image aberrations including: splicing, cloning, erasing, duplications – with and without alterations, over-contrasting and cropping.

While increasingly sophisticated digital tools are being developed to detect image manipulation, human oversight to interpret these results remains essential. This series of videos will help prepare better equip the editors who are providing this oversight.

“This is a terrific educational resource for editors and publishers, introducing principles of image integrity screening and illustrating how to detect aberrations typically seen in scientific literature. The first module in the series provides basic tools to screen images for alteration and duplication. We hope editors will find this video useful while working to protect the integrity of scientific records.”

—Teodoro Pulvirenti, Ph.D
Editorial Director, Journals Publishing Group
ACS Publications Division

The series is a product of the STM Working Group on Image Alteration and Duplication Detection which includes members from Elsevier, JAMA, Aries Systems, the American Physiological Society, EMBO Press, the American Chemical Society, BMJ, Rockefeller University Press, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, Atypon and STM.

Watch the Video

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