Our View of the Challenge

---

There is no turning back. The collegial, trusting world of academic research and publication we once enjoyed  is now over, brought on by new technologies and incentive systems that promote bad behavior. Fraud and integrity management are now part of the research publishing’s cost of doing business. 

The facts speak for themselves:  The historic rate of retraction for the industry of about 0.05% to 0.10% has doubled or, in some cases, tripled over the last 3 years with the largest  publishers leading the pack.  Most of this increase is due to integrity/fraud issues.
 

Despite widespread recognition of the problem, there is no clear-cut data that suggest that the industry has turned  the corner on integrity with its current approaches. 

The nature of fraud is that it morphs and migrates.  Publishers without sufficient defenses will ultimately be the target of fraud. Solutions for today are not sufficient for tomorrow.  The call to action is to bring retractions back to historical norms, if not better.  That requires more aggressive use of new data science technologies.