The number of tools available to help library staff identify potential research misconduct is rapidly expanding. Here are some recommendations.
(7 Aug 2025) The management of open access agreements within academic libraries creates the possibility for library staff to play a new role in the ongoing publishing integrity crisis. When library staff monitor open access agreements for publishing integrity problems, they take on, to some extent, the role of the sleuth. Taking on a new role requires a new set of tools.
Our training and skills prepare us at least somewhat for this work. Consider our ability to evaluate resources, explore publication histories, analyze bibliographies, maintain awareness of technological innovation, and exercise attention to detail. Even so, independent sleuths have been working on these problems for many years, developing strategies for spotting publishing integrity issues that are likely new to a librarian’s regular toolkit.
To begin to bring those strategies to a library audience, this review explores a few simple web-based tools that can help users identify possible misconduct. There are, of course, many other practices that are essential for a robust framework for research integrity and validation (for example, the broad adoption of persistent identifiers such as Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) for authors and Research Organization Registry (ROR) for institutions), but here we will focus on particular tools available for the individual sleuth in the library.
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