KEY TAKEAWAYS

• US government executive orders targeting EDI programmes are prompting federally funded journals to censor demographic data and equity-focused language.
• Authors and editors are pushing back to ensure data are made available and to maintain the integrity of the scientific record.

Following US government executive orders to end federal equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) programmes and to only recognise two sexes, The BMJ has emphasised the importance of retaining sex and gender data in published research. In an article in Undark, Peter Andrey Smith highlights another example of the scientific community pushing back against federal pressure to remove EDI-related data.

Authors make a stand

Smith describes the case of anthropologist Tamar Antin and co-authors, who faced an unusual request from the federally funded journal Public Health Reports following acceptance of their paper on tobacco use. The editors requested removal of the word “equitably” and demographic data, citing compliance with executive orders. Rather than grant the request, Antin and co-authors withdrew their paper entirely and went public. This “act of defiance” was met with widespread support from the scientific community, who argued that removing demographic data doesn’t just affect one paper’s conclusions – it hampers future studies by denying other scientists the opportunity to reanalyse findings or build on existing research.

“Removing demographic data doesn’t just affect one paper’s conclusions – it hampers future studies by denying other scientists the opportunity to reanalyse findings or build on existing research.”

The bigger picture

Smith also shares examples of federally funded researchers requesting:

• withdrawal
• removal of authors from bylines
• specific wording changes

to accepted papers, citing the political landscape. While this affects a minority of submissions directly, maintaining the integrity of the scientific record is paramount.

Looking ahead, the Committee on Publication Ethics’ position statement emphasises that publishing decisions and language choices should not be influenced by politics or government policies, and there is no place for retractions to censor the scientific record.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS 

• The International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers’ Research Identity Verification Framework aims to tackle fraudulent submissions, including from paper mills.
• The framework of layered identity checks for researchers, peer reviewers, and editors aims to raise obstacles to misconduct and enhance transparency, while maintaining inclusivity for all authentic researchers.

Research is facing an unprecedented integrity challenge, with sophisticated paper mills publishing poor-quality and fraudulent papers by unverifiable researchers and fake personas. To combat this issue, the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM) has developed a Research Identity Verification Framework, released for community review. In an interview with Retraction Watch, Hylke Koers, Chief Information Officer at STM, shared how the framework could be used by journals and institutions to verify the identity of researchers.

Why is the framework needed?

Currently, publishers rely on time-consuming manual checks to validate the identity of contributors such as authors, peer reviewers, or guest editors. These processes do not match the speed and organisation of fraudulent networks. Part of the problem lies in the ease with which untraceable digital identities can be created and used to manipulate key parts of the publishing pipeline, for example, suggesting a fake reviewer. New approaches are needed to tackle this growing issue.

How will the framework be used?

The framework introduces a layered, systemic method of identity verification. Suggested methods include asking individuals to:

• validate an institutional email address
• sign in via ORCiD or use ORCiD Trust Markers
• provide a government document, such a passport or driving licence.

Koers notes that implementing these checks would make impersonation or identity theft more difficult and improve accountability, while multiple options for verification retain accessibility. Publishers are advised to assess the level of risk, asking “how confident can we be that this person is who they claim to be, and that the information they’ve provided is genuine?”.

“Implementing these checks would make impersonation or identity theft more difficult and improve accountability”

What are the next steps?

The success of the Research Identity Verification Framework will rely on widespread adoption. The STM plans to collaborate with early adopters to develop practical implementation pathways and refine future recommendations.

Koers notes that ultimately, no framework can eliminate all fraud, but making it more difficult to act fraudulently and easier to trace and respond to publishing misconduct should have a positive impact.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Most journals surveyed do not allow authors to submit PLS, often citing a perceived lack of demand from readers or authors.
• Existing PLS practices are inconsistent in format, peer review processes, and indexing methods.

Plain language summaries (PLS) have the power to unlock science for everyone – so why are they still missing from many medical journals? A recent article by Slávka Baróniková and colleagues, published in European Medical Writers Association (EMWA)’s journal Medical Writing, presents the results of a survey conducted by Open Pharma in 2022–2023. The survey explored how journal editors and publishers view the role of PLS in scientific publishing and whether current practices align with Open Pharma’s recommendations for clear and accessible research communication.

73% of journals surveyed did not allow author-submitted PLS, citing reasons such as a perceived lack of reader or author demand, lack of relevance to journal content, and insufficient resources.

The 16-question survey gathered responses from 29 individuals across 26 individual journals and 7 publisher portfolios. Here are the main findings:

• Most journals do not support PLS submission: 73% of journals surveyed did not allow author-submitted PLS.
• PLS practices are inconsistent: Among journals that did accept PLS, formats, placement, peer review, and indexing practices varied widely.
• Peer review and discoverability are limited: Fewer than half of the journals that published PLS peer reviewed them or used appropriate PubMed metatags. Only one journal reported consistent use of the PLS metatag, which is crucial for indexing.
• Perceived barriers include lack of demand: Common reasons for not accepting PLS included a perceived lack of reader or author demand, lack of relevance to journal content, and insufficient resources.
• Most journals recognise the potential for PLS to increase readership: Patients, healthcare professionals, and students were seen as key audiences for PLS.

Despite progress by some publishers, the survey highlights an ongoing need for greater standardisation, more consistent peer review, and improved visibility of PLS. It also revealed that some respondents were unsure of their own journal’s PLS policies, underscoring the need for better internal communication and training.

The authors urge journals to adopt Open Pharma’s recommendations and strengthen their PLS policies to ensure that PLS are accessible, discoverable, and scientifically accurate.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Non-native English speakers face additional barriers to scientific publishing, from journal guidelines accessible only in English to higher rates of language-related manuscript rejection.
• Journals, congresses, and others are beginning to offer support ranging from English language mentoring programmes, training, and buddy systems to free AI proofreading tools.

With English the prominent language of scientific dialogue, non-native speakers can face challenges both day-to-day and longer term, including through the publication development process. Recently, Dr Gabriel Nakamura and Professor Bruno Soares shared their experiences in a climate where non-native English speakers are ~2.5 times more likely to face language-related manuscript rejection than native English speakers. However, efforts by journals and others in the scientific communication ecosystem mean the situation is beginning to change.

Non-native English speakers are ~2.5 times more likely to face language-related manuscript rejection than native English speakers.

A recent EcoEvoRxiv preprint, discussed in a Nature news article by Mariana Lenharo, delved into barriers and potential solutions in the biological sciences. Dr Henry Arenas-Castro and colleagues looked at 736 biological sciences journals, finding that:

• only 8% provided full author guidelines in a non-English language
• less than 7% published articles in non-English languages
• just 10% explicitly allowed authors to cite non-English language references
• only 2 journals (0.3%) stated manuscripts would not be rejected based on perceived English language quality.

These figures support calls from Dr Nakamura and Prof. Soares for stakeholders to recognise language barriers and address them to improve inclusivity for non-native English speakers.

Journals, congresses, and institutions are starting to offer schemes and tools, including:

• English language mentoring programmes, where authors can work with an editor or volunteer to refine their manuscript wording, or prepare congress abstracts and presentations
• allowing congress presentations in multiple languages, with live translations and captioning
• buddy systems and English language training and practice activities
• journals offering authors free use of artificial intelligence proofreading tools, rather than directing to (paid) professional editing services.

While interventions are having a positive impact, we look forward to seeing any further action from the medical publishing community to help drive change.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• A recent systematic review revealed that incomplete reporting of interventional studies remains a widespread issue.
• The authors encourage journals to require a reporting checklist as part of the submission process.

An extensive repository of openly accessible reporting guidelines to aid complete reporting of interventional studies is available at the click of a button. However, a recent commentary published in Trials highlights that incomplete reporting remains a substantial problem.

The commentary describes a systematic synthesis of 51 randomised controlled trials reporting on 53 school-based physical activity interventions published between 2015 and 2020. Despite a growth in the availability and promotion of reporting guidelines since previous reviews were conducted, only one training programme (ie 2% of those analysed) provided complete information covering all intervention components. Even simple information, such as the intervention location, was absent from most reports.

Of the 33 journals that published articles included in the review, only one required reporting checklists for all aspects of the intervention to be submitted.

Strikingly, of the 33 journals that published articles included in the review, only one required reporting checklists for all aspects of the intervention to be submitted. Ryan et al contacted the editors of the other 32 journals suggesting that they update their submission guidelines to include mandatory submission of a reporting checklist. Twenty seven journals responded, 26% of whom welcomed the advice and amended their submission guidelines accordingly.

The authors stress that current systems, including journal submission policies, are allowing wasteful practices to continue. They ask, “how much more waste will be tolerated before action is taken?”

But, why is incomplete reporting a problem anyway?:

• Incomplete reporting impedes the readers’ interpretation of study results and prevents effective replication.
• This ultimately leads to poor outcomes for both study funders and participants.

The authors recommend a resource from the Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research (EQUATOR) Network to help spark discussion about complete reporting among researchers, editorial teams, funders, and reviewers. They also signalled a clear call to action: all journals that publish interventional research should review their submission requirements to mandate completion of reporting checklists.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The systems for finding, training, and incentivising peer reviewers may need to change to meet current demand.

Peer review has developed as a means of establishing quality control in research, but can current processes keep up with rapidly increasing research volumes? In a recent Nature Career Feature article, Amber Dance reported on the difficulties and ideas for overhauling the system, drawing on the experiences of a range of stakeholders in the peer review process.

Several issues with current peer review processes were raised:

• It takes time. Aczel et al estimated that in 2020, reviewers worldwide spent over 130 million hours (nearly 15,000 years) reviewing articles.
• It is often unpaid work. While this might reduce the risk of bias, it makes peer reviewing unfeasible for some.
• Reviewers are becoming more selective about the work they are willing to take on. Some now only peer review for not-for-profit journals or preprints, where they focus on the science rather than suitability for a given journal.
• There is underrepresentation of junior researchers and those from countries with less well-established research infrastructure.
• It can be a slow process, sometimes resulting in delays to publication and the ability for research to shape policy, for example. In some cases, processes may even drive researchers to leave academia altogether.

Reviewers are becoming more selective about the work they are willing to take on. Some now only peer review for not-for-profit journals or preprints.

Dance explored opinions on how peer review could change, such as:

• Incentives for researchers’ time. This might vary from a free journal subscription to the more controversial issue of journals paying for reviews. Other incentives might include giving more recognition to named peer reviewers.
• Peer review training for early-career researchers and those in lower-income countries, to increase the pool and diversity of potential reviewers.
• Increasing the use of technology to check aspects of statistics or methods, for example.
• Reducing the number of reviews needed through increased screening of submissions prior to peer review, allowing authors to ‘recycle’ reviews for a related journal submission, or enabling submission of reviews collected before an initial submission (such as those from eLife reviewed preprints).

Drawing on these perspectives, many changes could be made to peer review – we look forward to seeing how processes may evolve in future.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Nature News article reveals scammers are exploiting the publication process for journals’ special issues to get poor-quality articles published.
• Hundreds of articles have been retracted or flagged as concerning, with further retractions expected in 2022.

Impersonation fraud is becoming an increasing problem for journals. As outlined by Holly Else in a Nature News article, publishers have uncovered networks of scammers posing as legitimate researchers to gain access to reputable journals and get poor-quality (and often nonsensical) articles published – a phenomenon particularly prevalent for special issue editions. These fraudulent activities threaten the credibility of journals and have led to the retraction of hundreds of articles by top publishers, with the number expected to rise in 2022.

Special issues have been specifically targeted by fraudsters as they are often overseen by expert guest editors who work independently from the journal. A notable example was reported in 2020 by Springer Nature’s Journal of Nanoparticle Research, after scammers posing as eminent scientists tricked the journal into allowing them to manage a special issue on nanotechnology in healthcare. When examining the submissions, the journal noticed that most of the manuscripts were of low quality and/or did not align with the theme of the special issue. Subsequent investigation revealed that the guest editors had used fake domain names that at first sight looked like the real scientists’ institutional email addresses. Many abnormalities in the peer review process were also identified.

“All of the evidence points to an organised network that tries – in this case successfully – to infiltrate scientific journals with the objective of easily publishing manuscripts from pseudo-scientists or less-productive researchers who want to appear in respectable journals.”

(Editorial Board, Journal of Nanoparticle Research)

It is unclear why fraudulent organisations wish to exploit the publication process to publish sham papers. Guillaume Cabanac, a computer scientist who has helped to uncover fabricated papers in special issues, notes that the pressure to publish in academia may be one reason driving this phenomenon. However, Retraction Watch co-founder Ivan Oransky argues that these low-quality papers, whose titles often do not make sense, are unlikely to have long-term benefit for the academic resume. Whatever the reason, it appears that the practice is becoming more sophisticated and prevalent. In 2021, Elsevier and Springer Nature each issued concerns for over 400 papers published as part of special issues in certain journals, resulting in the retraction of hundreds of articles.

Elsevier and Springer Nature indicated that they have introduced extra checks and are working to develop computerised tools to identify and prevent attempts to exploit the publication process. We hope that all publishers consider the threat level to their journals and find ways to minimise the risk of the ‘special issue’ scam.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Data availability statements (DAS) are mandatory at IOP Publishing.
• Verifying DAS in revised manuscripts has increased editorial processing time.
• The likelihood of manuscripts being returned to authors for quality control reasons has also increased.

Data availability statements (DAS) have helped to improve the transparency and quality of research reporting in recent years by encouraging data sharing, and are now commonplace in manuscripts. However, this drive towards open data is coupled with a need to publish results quickly, emphasised by the COVID-19 pandemic. The challenge for publishers moving forward is to ensure extra quality control steps required for DAS do not preclude rapid data dissemination.

IOP Publishing’s 2019 data availability policy requires all accepted articles to include a DAS and a persistent identifier linking to the location of the data and licensing terms, where appropriate. In their recent article, Jade Holt and colleagues measured the impact of this policy on manuscript processing time and the number of times manuscripts were returned to authors (‘unsubmitted’) in 3 journals.

Including DAS verification in quality checks for revised manuscripts resulted in the following:

• Editorial staff took significantly longer to complete checklists.
• The likelihood and frequency with which manuscripts were ‘unsubmitted’ increased significantly; submissions in which authors claimed to have included data within the manuscript were the most affected.
• The number of ‘never-unsubmitted’ manuscripts decreased overall, although this effect was partially mitigated when efforts were made to clarify DAS instructions.

Extra quality control requirements on journal manuscripts can therefore increase total processing time and, by extension, raise publishing costs. However, the small sample sizes mean results should be interpreted with caution.

Extra quality control requirements on journal manuscripts can therefore increase total processing time and, by extension, raise publishing costs.

Integrated software tools used to measure the impact of DAS on publication workflows in this study could be used to monitor new data approaches without relying on self-reporting or adding further workflow burden to editorial staff. We look forward to seeing how data sharing policies will be refined in the future to support rapid data dissemination.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• A survey of 112 medical journal editors-in-chief found that most supported co-authorship by patients.
• The biomedical research industry needs policies to support ethical patient authorship and encourage greater patient participation.

A recent study led by Dr Kelly Cobey found that journal editors broadly support the inclusion of patients as co-authors on scientific publications. 

In a cross-sectional survey of 112 medical journal editors-in-chief, 69% considered patient authorship to be acceptable, with most respondents (74%) indicating that patients should not need an academic affiliation to participate as co-authors. A commonly held opinion among the respondents was that as long as patients met International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) criteria, they should not be excluded from authorship. The study also highlighted the value of patients’ contributions as being critical to biomedical research, with authorship potentially serving as an equitable way to acknowledge those efforts.

Those not in favour of including patients as co-authors highlighted several concerns:

• patient co-authors’ lack of scientific training
• patient co-authors’ unfamiliarity with publication processes and ethical scientific publishing
• the possibility of introducing bias into a study by including patient co-authors.

Some of these could be addressed by journal policies clearly outlining standards for patient co-authorship, which would also remove some barriers to patient involvement. While just over one-third of respondents supported updating the ICMJE criteria to be more inclusive of patient partners, an equal proportion did not think the ICMJE criteria required changing, with the remainder unsure whether a change was needed. Nonetheless, a theme emerging from the survey responses was that further clarity in the ICMJE criteria would benefit patient participation.

Updating the ICMJE criteria would “…improve editors’ and authors’ confidence to include patients in research”.

Other researchers and patient involvement advocates have echoed the conclusions of the study, indicating that these efforts would help to improve equity, diversity and inclusion in medical publishing. While the study demonstrates a willingness from journal editors for patients to be authors on scientific publications, it also highlights that there are still barriers to overcome to make this commonplace.

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To enable insights into the editorial composition of journals and the potential biases influencing editorial decisions, Andreas Pacher, Tamara Heck, and Kerstin Schoch have created Open Editors, a dataset containing public information on nearly half a million journal editors across 6,833 journals run by 22 academic publishers. For each editor or editorial board member, the following data—or ‘editormetrics’—are collected:

• name
• institutional affiliation
• editorial position
• journal name
• ISSN
• publisher
• URL linking to the journal’s editorial board information
• date of data collection (‘web-scraping’).

The initiative, first outlined in a SocArXiv preprint article in March 2021, has received support from researchers, who believe that it will improve transparency around decision-making in scientific publishing. For instance, it could shed light on gender bias among editorial boards, encouraging publishers to improve equity within these groups. The database could also make it easier to verify key facts such as the editors’ authentic affiliation with the journal, to help identify predatory journals. Aligned with industry efforts toward greater open science, Open Editors is freely available and will be updated annually through at least 2023.

The authors note that “editormetric analyses aim to detect biases and inequalities that are sustained by editorial power within the scientific publication system”.

Pacher and colleagues suggest that the editormetrics they have collected would be even more valuable, and inform on more aspects of diversity, when linked with other datasets. We look forward to seeing how researchers use Open Editors and how these analyses help to improve equity in scientific publishing.

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