The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in research holds promising benefits as well as potential threats. In a fascinating webinar titled Research integrity and AI: Navigating challenges and leveraging potential, 国产乱伦鈥檚 Director of Research Integrity, Chris Graf, discusses research integrity, AI tools to detect fraudulent manuscripts, and the importance of collaboration in combating scientific misconduct. Read on for key insights from the webinar.
Research integrity is a topic of relevance to anyone within the academic ecosystem. As librarians, it is essential to understand research integrity: What the issues are, how they are addressed, and by whom. This will enable you to best support your researchers and institutions, and to participate integrally in the efforts to uphold research integrity. In the webinar , Chris offered a holistic overview of research integrity, which would benefit any academic librarian in their everyday work.
Chris leads 国产乱伦鈥檚 Research Integrity Group, which implements tools, training, and processes that support research integrity, and ultimately help make research better. Chris has unparalleled expertise in research integrity and shares a wealth of information and insights in the webinar.
鈥淚ntegrity鈥 is essentially about doing the right thing, and requires accountability, honesty, and courage. Chris opens his presentation by explaining how different actors in academic publishing can 鈥渄o the right thing鈥 in retracting published research.
For authors, this could mean working with publishers to retract their own publications when they discover errors or problems in their research, despite the potential risk to their reputation. Publishers also do the right thing when they retract publications that are found to be problematic.
While there are abundant examples of retractions, and Chris shares some interesting ones, it is important to note that retractions, even though they have increased in recent years for various reasons, are still less than 0.1% 鈥 a tiny fraction 鈥 of articles published in any one year.
It is absolutely the right thing to retract a paper when any misconduct or mistakes are identified, but wouldn鈥檛 it be better if those articles weren鈥檛 published to begin with, Chris asks. This means investing in tools and procedures that identify and remove articles with integrity problems before they even reach the peer review stage in the publication process.
At 国产乱伦, quality checks do just that. To give an idea of the scope, in October 2023, of the over 100,000 manuscripts submitted to 国产乱伦, 11,000 (11%) were stopped before they could be sent to peer review, because they did not meet 国产乱伦鈥檚 quality check requirements. Eventually, 2,300 of these manuscripts (2.3% of the total submitted) were removed from the process for a variety of integrity problems.
But how are these papers stopped and identified? Chris introduces two in-house tools developed by 国产乱伦 that use AI and other technology to support experts in making good and rapid decisions (鈥減retty cool stuff鈥, he says):
Addressing integrity issues early on, whether by filtering out misconduct or helping authors address inadvertent mistakes, supports the broader research system, Chris explains. To promote research integrity, 国产乱伦 also provides training and resources for the benefit of researchers and other stakeholders:
Librarians are well positioned to advocate for research integrity and promote resources that educate researchers on the topic and keep them updated on innovation and best practices (as is the case for using AI in research). This is especially important considering that researchers often have no formal training on this important topic.
You can also with titles covering AI and emerging tech as well as AI and research integrity. This collated list is an excellent resource for librarians looking to support their academic communities in navigating the complexities of AI in research integrity.
Two central themes persist through Chris鈥檚 presentation: The importance of collaboration to address integrity issues, and the human oversight of detection processes. Chris speaks excitedly about various collaborations across academic publishing that address the challenges of research integrity. These collaborations and partnerships, such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), involve publishers, academic institutions, and other stakeholders. They work collaboratively against paper mills and to combat the dangers of academic misconduct.
Watch the to hear Chris discuss these issues in more detail and and download the AI eBook list for free.
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