Pilot program will detect duplicate submissions that may indicate paper mill activity
(12 Oct 2023) STM Solutions today announced the launch of a pilot program to detect duplicate submissions to scholarly publications. Submitting the same manuscript to multiple journals simultaneously is, in most cases, against publisher policies and often indicates the work of paper mills, which produce and sell fraudulent research.
This workflow, part of the STM Integrity Hub, represents the first time duplicate submissions can be detected across different journals, publishers, and submission systems while upholding robust confidentiality and privacy standards. IEEE, IOP Publishing, ACS Publications, Taylor & Francis, Sage, and PeerJ are among the publishers who have already signed on.
“The journal ecosystem is very siloed in nature, which has been exploited by paper mills and other bad actors spamming journals with identical, often fake manuscripts,” Hylke Koers, CIO of STM Solutions, said. “The duplicate submissions workflow represents a milestone in collaboration between academic publishers, marking the first moment that we are able to automatically detect duplicate submissions across different publishers and editorial systems. We expect more publishers and journals will join this pilot soon, which we expect will evolve into an important tool against systematic misuse.”
The press release in full is here.
