Policing of fraudulent conference proceedings needs collaboration

Recent retractions of scientific articles have put research integrity in the spotlight. Of the millions of papers published every year, about 30,000 have been added to the Retraction Watch database since it was established in 2010.

The unintended, and very much unwanted, consequence of the prevailing academic reward system is that unethical practices by individuals and shady organisations are incentivised. But the consequences of bogus papers penetrating the scholarly record are incredibly damaging. The prevalence of these papers erodes trust and confidence in science, among both the public and scientists themselves; if the research record becomes unreliable, subsequent work that draws on it is also compromised.

We know that research misconduct is increasingly industrialised, particularly through the prevalence of paper mills. These profit-oriented organisations produce and sell fabricated or manipulated manuscripts that are counterfeits of legitimate research articles. They take advantage of the fact that researchers around the world need to publish to further their careers and that, in some cases, there is little oversight of the quality or integrity of those articles – if they are published, they count – and there are scant rewards for calling out unethical behaviour.

Conference proceedings – written records of oral presentations made at scientific meetings – are typically even more vulnerable to integrity issues because publishers rely on conference organisers to apply robust peer-review processes. It makes sense that the organisers are responsible for the selection and validation of the published content because that process is an extension of the planning and editorial decision-making that went into creating the conference, but it can raise eyebrows in an industry where publishers have traditionally managed peer review.

At IOP Publishing, we set clear expectations of what constitutes good peer review, and we check that conference organisers execute it. We carefully assess submitted volumes prior to publication, but the growth of scientific conferences during the past decade and the corresponding rise in demand for proceedings publishing services has made coping with increased scale a challenge.

Our response has been to invest heavily in our capability to check content. We have worked with our technology partner Morressier to develop a proceedings-only content-management and peer-review platform that ensures conference organisers use our tools, giving us visibility of their process. We have also significantly grown our proceedings team and invested in skills and training, and we are already seeing the results. For example, we have seen in a sharp decline in ethics cases relating to articles published in 2022.

On the occasions when bogus articles evade our filters, correcting the version of record is essential. This is achieved by either retracting the article or posting an expression of concern. In both cases, the article remains available to read online to ensure the process happens in a fully transparent way and in accordance with COPE guidelines.  

Problematic papers can be brought to our attention by anyone, and whistleblowers have included internal staff, authors, readers and members of the academic community with a special interest in upholding research integrity. We monitor PubPeer, a website that allows users to discuss and review published scientific research, and also the Problematic Paper Screener.

Ethics investigations must be handled carefully because the stakes for the individuals involved are often incredibly high and can impact careers. Evidence of misconduct is assessed by our research integrity team, who employ various software tools to investigate concerns. We often consult independent subject experts and editorial board members who can provide a further scientific assessment of the paper and the potential impacts of any misconduct. Authors are then asked for an explanation and given the opportunity to refute the allegations, after which a final decision is reached.

Depending on the outcome of the investigation, authors can be educated on future best practice or advised to make a correction or comment. In the most serious cases, the work is retracted. We go to great lengths to ensure the complainant, the author’s institution and our readership are treated fairly and kept informed, in line with COPE guidelines.

We feel that our organisation is at the forefront of efforts to ensure integrity in proceedings publishing, but this is an industry-wide problem that requires industry-wide solutions. Publishers, editors and institutions must all play a role in developing robust, scalable and sustainable systems that can help detect and report misconduct.

Since fraudulent manuscripts can be submitted to multiple journals at the same time, a joined-up effort is needed to flag problematic submissions across all publishers’ programmes. To that end, IOP Publishing has joined 23 other publishers in the development of the Research Integrity Hub, an initiative of the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM). The hub aims to offer cloud-based tools for editors from any publisher to check submitted articles for research integrity issues, helping publishers remain one step ahead of paper mills and unethical authors.

But we need to go further. Articles viewed in isolation often appear plausible; it is only through specific analysis of patterns across large collections of articles – often published in many places – that the deception becomes apparent. And the emergence of “large language model” AI, such as ChatGPT, is only going to make it more difficult for individual publishers to hold the line against industrial-scale fraud.

It is clear that more cross-industry initiatives will be essential to combat misconduct effectively.

David McDade is head of books and proceedings publishing at IOP Publishing.