Jennifer Byrne

Our new paper is out in PLOS Biology! I'm very conflicted about the project: proud because it feels like the most important project I've ever been a part of, but also very sad that we found so many problems in our field.

Read the paper here: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

📗 The new issue of REACH Magazine is almost here!

🔍 Featuring insights on the future of peer review, updated guidance on research misconduct oversight, science sleuthing with Lonni Besançon, WCRI history, and more.

👀 Stay tuned!
#REACHmagazine #SIA #ResearchIntegrity

Widespread image reuse, manipulation uncovered in animal studies of brain injury One of the papers in the analysis contained a figure (bottom) found to have overlap with other work by the same author (top). Both papers have been retracted. Annotated images: PubPeer More than 20…

The problems were so pervasive they abandoned their review and instead began investigating how widespread image duplication was in their field.

Widespread image reuse, manipulation uncovered in animal studies of brain injury

Contact information for integrity/ethics teams at major publishers • American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, Science, Science Advances, etc.): science_data@aaas.org. • American Chemical Society (ACS): Each journal usually has contact information for a managing editor, usually at managing.editor@<journal-url>.org • American Society for Microbiology: ethics.journals@asmusa.org • British Medical Journal (BMJ): publication.ethics@bmj.com • Elsevier (Elsevier, Cell Press, etc.): ethicsexpert@elsevier.com • Frontiers: research.integrity@frontiersin.org • Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE): pub-ethics@ieee.org • Karger: publication.ethics@karger.com • MDPI: publication.ethics@mdpi.com • Oxford University Press: journals.ethics@oup.com • PLOS: pub-ethics@plos.org • Rockefeller University Press (Journal of Cell Biology, Life Science Alliance, etc.): integrity@rupress.org • Sage (Sage, Mary-Ann Liebert): publication_ethics@sagepub.com • Springer Nature (Springer, Nature, BMC): ethics.reporting@springernature.com • Taylor & Francis (Taylor & Francis, Dove Medical Press, CRC Press, Routledge): ethics@tandf.co.uk • Thieme: publishingethics@thieme.de • Wiley (Wiley, Hindawi, FEBS Press): researchintegrity@wiley.com

Our entry on reporting publication integrity issues to publishers has contact information to reach the publication integrity and publication ethics departments at most major scholarly publishers. Read here: osf.io/4edk2

All of COSIG is available at cosig.net!

Publication Integrity Week 2025 Publication Integrity Week is an opportunity for all involved in publication ethics to gain insights from peers, share practical solutions, and learn from experts in their field.

COPE Publication Integrity Week 2025 publicationethics.org/events/publi...

Home - MetaROR MetaResearch Open Review MetaResearch Open Review MetaResearch Open Review A new platform designed to transform how we review and share metaresearch A new platform designed to transform

MetaROR, a platform for reviews of research on research, is a success! We have published 24 sets of reviews and have 16 submissions in process. MetaROR now has 9 partners - these are journals that agree to use our reviews when authors submit to them. metaror.org #metascience #openaccess

AI chatbots are sycophants — researchers say it’s harming science Nature asked researchers who use artificial intelligence how its propensity for people-pleasing affects their work — and what they are doing to mitigate it.

Is AI sycophancy holding science back?
A preprint by @jurafsky.bsky.social and his team found that AI chatbots are 50% more sycophantic than humans.
In this piece, researchers tell me how AI sycophancy is creeping into many of the tasks that they use LLMs for.
Read more @nature.com

#2. This highlights the continuing shame of major journals doing a poor job of finding quality reviewers and not being responsible for the dubious work in their journals. They seem to want the flash, but are unwilling to clean up the messes they create.

#1. A huge number of "microRNAs" are not microRNAs. They will not act like microRNAs and should not be studied as microRNAs. Any studies of these "microRNAs" are dubious and likely erroneous and/or misinterpreted studies. MicroRNA studies should start with confirming it is in MirGeneDB.

This is a must read about the challenges of microRNA research.
academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

Brilliant work by @frommlab.bsky.social and other great collaborators.

Here are some key points...

a statue of a man 's head with a bunch of paper coming out of it ALT: a statue of a man 's head with a bunch of paper coming out of it

🔥🔥🔥🔥New paper out; a opinion piece in @narjournal.bsky.social with Michael Hackenberg, @panosbino.bsky.social, Kevin K Peterson and @marcfriedlander.bsky.social 🔥🔥🔥🔥

„Knowing is not enough, we must apply“

academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

The new landing page for COSIG, available at cosig.net. It reads: Anyone can do post-publication peer review. Anyone can be a steward of the scientific literature. Anyone can do forensic metascience. Anyone can sleuth. However, investigating the integrity of the published scientific literature often requires domain-specific knowledge that not everyone will have. This open source project is a collection of guides written and maintained by publication integrity experts to distribute this domain-specific knowledge so that others can participate in post-publication peer review. COSIG currently hosts 31 guides and was last updated on 25 September 2025. Guides can be downloaded as individual PDFs. A combined PDF with all guides included can be downloaded here.

COSIG has a new landing page! Check it out at cosig.net.

(Files for COSIG are still hosted on OSF!)

R/P from Dan Weiss on LinkedIn: The National Academies is launching a workshop on enhancing scientific integrity with a focus on the social and behavioral sciences. (Self)-nominate for workshop planning committee: www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/enh...

Introduction to INSPECT-SR Training Workshop November An introductory 2-hour online workshop will introduce participants to the INSPECT-SR tool for assessing trustworthiness of randomised controlled...

Introductory online INSPECT-SR workshop. November 6th, 12-2pm UK-time. Free, places limited. BOOK: www.trybooking.com/uk/events/la...

📣 Competition Launch Alert! Recod.ai/LUC - Scientific Image Forgery Detection hosted by Recod.ai & Loyola Chicago

🎯 To build models to detect and segment forgeries
💰 $55,000 Prize Pool
⏰ Entry Deadline: January 8, 2026

www.kaggle.com/competitions...

Competition @kaggle.com: Scientific Image Forgery Detection

Who can develop the best model to detect copy/move forgeries in biomedical images?

#ImageForensics

www.kaggle.com/competitions...

How to spot fake scientists and stop them from publishing papers Journals are considering doing identity checks to expose fake authors — but there are downsides.

Some real fake news! Paper mills are creating fake authors who can then serve as fake reviewers. The illustration of the fake reviewer sitting at their desk is excellent. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

This looks like a very interesting conference, with some great speakers: buff.ly/Wj4DpcX.

Lisa Bero will be talking about "Hijacking research integrity: What can possibly go wrong and how can we fix it?"
🧵

🌍 The early bird registrations for the 9th World Conference on Research Integrity are open until 3 March 2026. Don't miss the chance to explore key topics like AI, research security, and more.
#WCRI2026
Learn more: wcri2026.org

Looking forward to travel to New Zealand and Sydney next week.
I will give talks in Auckland (November 3rd, sponsored by @proofigai.bsky.social ), Wellington (November 10th), and at the International Research Integrity Conference in Sydney on November 17th.
researchintegrityconf.com

🧪 @abalkina.bsky.social @deadneanderthals.bsky.social

AI: Journals are automatically rejecting public health dataset papers to combat paper mills

AI: Journals are automatically rejecting public health dataset papers to combat paper mills www.bmj.com/content/391/...

The chemistry community should ban drawing chemical structures with generative AI, chemists warn AIs like Microsoft's Copilot, Google's Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT still make serious errors rendering structural formulae

The chemistry community should ban drawing chemical structures with generative AI, chemists warn
www.chemistryworld.com/news/the-che...

On and off-the-record correction practices: A survey-based study of how chemistry researchers react to errors This survey-based study (982 participants) explores chemistry researchers’ practices and motivations in correcting errors in scientific publications.While respondents believe errors should be corre...

✨My new survey-based study on how chemistry researchers react to errors is now published in Accountability in Research @accountabilityair.bsky.social! A big thanks to the participants & @nanobubbles.bsky.social members for feedback 🫧. #ScienceCorrection #ResearchOnResearch doi.org/10.1080/0898...

1 in 5 chemists have deliberately added errors into their papers during peer review, study finds Conclusion is one of many in a report about how chemists handle errors in manuscripts

1 in 5 chemists have deliberately added errors into their papers during peer review, study finds

#PeerReview #Chemistry #AcademicPublishing #WCRI2026 #WCRI

cen.acs.org/policy/publi...

Background landscape of hills and trees with an owl flying overhead. At the top is the logo for Publication Integrity Week, and text "Register today". Under the day -Wednesday 19 November- and theme of the day title "Collaboration and community building" the title of this session "Detectives of research: techniques and teamwork in publication sleuthing" and the photos of the speakers Anna Abalkina, Rene Aquarius, Reese Richardson, and moderator Marie Soulière.

How do research sleuths uncover and communicate publication concerns?
Join Anna Abalkina, Reese Richardson, Rene Aquarius, & Marie Soulière for
*Detectives of research: Techniques and teamwork in publication sleuthing*
🔗 Register https://ow.ly/3toB50XeQZY
#PublicationIntegrityWeek

This heatmap displays the change in the mean annual count of specimens collected between 2010 and 2019 compared to the reference period of 1970–2009, in 1-degree latitude-longitude grids, across all three taxonomic groups combined (Chordata, Plantae and Arthropoda). Substantial patterns of decline are seen, particularly apparent across areas with historically high levels of collecting across Australia, North America, Western Europe

We're collecting less than half as many biodiversity specimens as in the 1960s-1980s, at a time when they're more important than ever for climate & ecology science. Natural history collections provide crucial data that no other source can match. Our new paper in Nature Comms: doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Just call me Mr Editor in Chief I have recently received an invitation I never expected to see. Apparently I am in demand to be the editor of a scientific journal - the pre...

After being invited to apply for Editor in Chief for what appears to be an academic journal, despite zero academic experience, I wonder quite what is going on: brianclegg.blogspot.com/2025/10/just... #sciencejournals #academicpublishing #papermills

From 2015 to 2023, eight years of empirical research on research integrity: a scoping review - Research Integrity and Peer Review Background Research on research integrity (RI) has grown exponentially over the past several decades. Although the earliest publications emerged in the 1980 s, more than half of the existing literature has been produced within the last five years. Given that the most recent comprehensive literature review is now eight years old, the present study aims to extend and update previous findings. Method We conducted a systematic search of the Web of Science and Constellate databases for articles published between 2015 and 2023. To structure our overview and guide our inquiry, we addressed the following seven broad questions about the field:-What topics does the empirical literature on RI explore? What are the primary objectives of the empirical literature on RI? What methodologies are prevalent in the empirical literature on RI? What populations or organizations are studied in the empirical literature on RI? Where are the empirical studies on RI conducted? Where is the empirical literature on RI published? To what degree is the general literature on RI grounded in empirical research? Additionally, we used the previous scoping review as a benchmark to identify emerging trends and shifts. Results Our search yielded a total of 3,282 studies, of which 660 articles met our inclusion criteria. All research questions were comprehensively addressed. Notably, we observed a significant shift in methodologies: the reliance on interviews and surveys decreased from 51 to 30%, whereas the application of meta-scientific methods increased from 17 to 31%. In terms of theoretical orientation, the previously dominant “Bad Apple” hypothesis declined from 54 to 30%, while the “Wicked System” hypothesis increased from 46 to 52%. Furthermore, there has been a pronounced trend toward testing solutions, rising from 31 to 56% at the expense of merely describing the problem, which fell from 69 to 44%. Conclusion Three gaps highlighted eight years ago by the previous scoping review remain unresolved. Research on decision makers (e.g., scientists in positions of power, policymakers, accounting for 3%), the private research sector and patents (4.7%), and the peer review system (0.3%) continues to be underexplored. Even more concerning, if current trends persist, these gaps are likely to become increasingly problematic.

🔵 Melbourne - Topic: From 2015 to 2023, eight years of empirical research on research integrity: a scoping review researchintegrityjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....
Thursday, 30 October at 4pm (Melbourne time)
Join the mailing list for more info and updates:
shorturl.at/mELZ3

Low quality papers are flooding the cancer literature — can this AI tool help to catch them? A large language model scans abstracts and titles for signs that an article was produced by a 'paper-mill' company.

Low quality papers are flooding the cancer literature — can this AI tool help to catch them? www.nature.com/articles/d41..., Revealing the Paper Mill Iceberg: AI-Based Screening of Cancer Research Publications www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...