For the past year, the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) has been using artificial intelligence (AI) software on all manuscripts it has provisionally accepted after peer review. This information came to us from Nature in their article, “Journals adopt AI to spot duplicated images in manuscripts.”
The aim is to automatically alert editors to duplicated images. The peer review process subjects an author’s scholarly work, research or ideas to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the same field and is considered necessary to ensure academic scientific quality.
The AACR is an early adopter in this technology. Hoping to avoid publishing papers with images that have been doctored — whether because of outright fraud or inappropriate attempts to beautify findings — many journals have hired people to manually scan submitted manuscripts for problems. However in the past year, at least four publishers have started automating the process by relying on AI software to spot duplications and partial duplications before manuscripts are published.
In the academic publishing world, peer review is like the “inspected by” sticker you find in your clothes. It provides assurance that someone who knows what they’re doing has double-checked it.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the intelligence and the technology behind world-class explainable AI solutions.
