Policy-based approaches to combat large-scale integrity threats

Author: Renee Hoch, Managing Editor, PLOS Publication Ethics Team

The publishing industry and research communities are grappling with numerous large-scale integrity threats, including paper mills, authorship-for-sale, peer review manipulation, and problematic usage of AI-generated content. These issues can evade publishers’ checks and be damaging on multiple levels if published: they can quickly litter the published record with high volumes of unreliable content, fracture researchers’ trust in peer review and publishing processes, and diminish public trust in science.  

PLOS and other publishers are taking multi-pronged approaches to detect and address large-scale integrity issues. This work includes cross-industry efforts such as the ongoing United2Act and STM Integrity Hub projects, as well as internal publisher-level efforts to improve detection and pre-publication resolution of large-scale issues. At a practical level, policies can be powerful tools in supporting these efforts and enabling editors to take decisive action in response to integrity concerns, particularly for cases involving concerns about paper mill involvement, peer review integrity, authorship manipulation, and AI-generated content. 

At PLOS, we regularly innovate and improve upon our policies as a branch of our preventive integrity work. With our publication ethics policies, we seek to raise awareness of integrity threats impacting scholarly publication; provide transparency as to our expectations of authors, editors, and reviewers; and support our teams in addressing ethics concerns. 

Over the past two years PLOS has implemented several new policies to support our integrity work, including: 

• Manipulation of the Publication Process policy – provides information about large-scale integrity issues and practices to avoid, empowers PLOS to reject or retract content suspected of any manipulation of the publication process, and supports us in maintaining details of these cases confidential so as to protect PLOS’ ability to safeguard our content.
• AI Tools & Technology policy – explains that we require transparent disclosure of AI tool and technology usage, distinguishes between acceptable and unacceptable usage, and states that PLOS may reject, retract, or take other action if concerns arise about noncompliance. 
• Ethical Peer Review policy – provides information about ethical standards and expectations for editors and reviewers, outlines PLOS’ position on AI tool usage in peer review, and provides information about actions PLOS may take in response to peer review integrity concerns.
• Standards for Professional Conduct policy – supports PLOS in responding to cases involving unprofessional behavior toward our staff and contributors.

In developing these policies, we take care to stand by our mission and values, avoid erecting barriers to progress and innovation, and think about the future of research and scholarly communications as well as our current needs. For example, in developing our AI policies we considered the risks that generative (gen) AI tools pose to scholarly publishing; the potential value of gen AI and other emerging AI tools in accelerating knowledge discovery and facilitating scholarly communications; and the unknowns of how research and research communications may evolve as AI tools become increasingly sophisticated and integrated into academic practices. 

In addition to supporting PLOS in upholding high standards of ethics & integrity, our policies also support our authors, reviewers, and editors in making ethical contributions to scholarly publishing. 

To complement our efforts, we encourage research institutions to address large-scale integrity issues in ethics training, both for early career researchers and established faculty. Knowledge of emerging issues and the applicable standards can help researchers to avoid ethically problematic practices during the writing, submission, and peer review processes. It can also empower researchers to identify potential red flags when reading, reviewing, and editing submissions and published work.

If you have questions about our publication ethics policies or concerns about policy compliance, please email our Publication Ethics team at pub-ethics@plos.org.