Shoddy research is polluting the literature repository, and a team aims to investigate this business and break the production chain of fake **.
A team of funders, scholarly publishers, and research institutions will tackle one of the thorny issues facing research integrity: the factory. This type of factory specializes in the production of fake or inferior ** and ** the authorship of these**.
In a statement issued on January 19, the team outlined a number of steps to address the issue, including an in-depth investigation of the factories, such as their geographical characteristics and expertise, and improved methods for verifying the authors' identity.
It was all empty talk before, but this time everyone wants to do what they say. Deborah Kahn, a member of the UK-based non-profit Council on the Ethics of Publication (COPE) and vice-chair of the steering group of United2Act, which issued the consensus statement, said.
* A factory is not a business or an organization, it has become a culture. Adam Day, a data scientist who founded Clear Skies in London, said. The company has developed a detection tool called The Mill Alarm. He said that the factory has always been a serious problem, but it has been neglected.
Estimates show that hundreds of thousands of articles from factories have polluted the scientific literature base. The factory will give false authorship to researchers who want to enrich their resumes.
One analysis showed that about 2% of all scientific research** published in 2022 resembled the products of the factory. It is difficult to find these **, although there are more and more technologies in this area, and it is even more difficult to find out the ** factory.
The researchers are also concerned that generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools will exacerbate the problem because the AI can produce fakes faster and go undetected by current detection techniques.
5-point plan
United2Act's announcement is the result of a summit co-hosted by COPE and the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers in Oxford, UK, last May.
The announcement was written in the statement that researchers, research integrity analysts, publishers, and funding agencies participated in the summit and identified five areas that require immediate action.
A working group has been established in each area that will raise awareness and awareness of the issue, respectively; In-depth investigation of the ** factory; Improving the post-publication correction system; support the development of tools for author, editor and reviewer identity verification; and ensure communication between the various working groups dealing with the issue.
The signatories to the statement include the prestigious funding agency European Research Council, the publishing services company Clarivate, and major publishers such as Elsevier, Wiley and Springer Nature. Nature maintains editorial independence from its publisher, Springer Nature.
"The consensus statement is just the basis for what we're going to do," Kahn said. With the working group and the steering group, she hopes to see concrete actions against factories in the future.
In-depth investigation
Most of these working groups have already met for the first time.
Anna Abalkina, a social scientist and independent research integrity analyst at Freie Universität Berlin, participated in the summit. She is involved in three of the five working groups, including the "Research Working Group". The task force will investigate the factories from an academic perspective, seeking information about their current status and size. Abalkina hoped that the working group would publish two or three articles on the issue.
She also pointed out that the results of this working group will not be quick because its members come from a variety of fields, including publishers, researchers, and anti-counterfeiting detectives (i.e., the people who discovered the ** factory and the mastermind behind it, such as abalkina). But that's also the biggest advantage of these working groups, Abalkina said, because they bring together experts from different industries.
The Education and Advocacy Working Group will develop advocacy tools on the factory and how it operates.
It is a way for people who already have relevant training and those who need it to get to know each other. "Because of language and cultural differences, it's important to tailor training programs to specific audiences." ”
Action data
To ensure future action, Kahn asked each working group to report on progress by June, when she would announce it to attendees at the World Conference on Research Integrity in Athens, Greece. The World Conference on Research Integrity is the most famous conference in this field.
Day, which did not participate in the statement, welcomed it. He would like to see more details about the work of these working groups, so that people like him can apply them to their own work. His company has discovered the location and main messenger of some ** factories.
But it's hard to get that information out there, Day said, "and we know the problem is." We know who's behind it. This should be actionable data. But it's up to other stakeholders to decide exactly how they want to act. ”
Other actions are also cracking down on the ** factory, and united2act does not want to duplicate other efforts, Abalkina said. These actions include the Center for Science, Technology, and Medical Research Integrity, which is developing a detection tool and is working on technologies to identify AI-generated **; AI is also an area that the United2Act working group will deliberately avoid.
Researchers believe that a number of actions are needed to make progress on this issue.
* The factory is very adaptable. They predict our actions. They know what we're doing, and then they're going to change their ways," Kahn said, "and the most exciting thing is that we're actually getting started." ”