Taylor & Francis Pilots Duplicate Submission Detection Tool

Publisher Trials New Process as Part of STM’s Integrity Hub.

Taylor & Francis has announced its participation in the launch of a tool to identify duplicate submissions to academic journals. The new workflow, part of STM’s Integrity Hub, will alert participating publishers to suspected duplicate submissions whilst upholding robust confidentiality and privacy standards.

Duplicate submission, when an author sends an article to more than one journal for consideration, is usually regarded as misconduct. It risks duplicate (or redundant) publication, when the same article is published in more than one journal, compromising the scholarly record. Duplicate submissions also lead to additional editorial staff and reviewers working on the same manuscript unnecessarily, and can often indicate involvement of paper mills, which produce and sell fraudulent research.

Until now, there hasn’t been a way for publishers receiving a new manuscript to know whether it is also under consideration elsewhere. The new tool, which is being trialed by several research publishers, will screen submissions and automatically alert journals when potential duplicates are detected. The development team has paid particular attention to policies and procedures that ensure confidentiality and research interests are protected.

The duplicate submission tool is part of a suite of initiatives in the STM Integrity Hub, developed by members to safeguard research integrity. Taylor & Francis is also testing a paper mill detection tool, which uses innovative technology to spot signs of possible paper mill characteristics in submitted papers.

Alongside Taylor & Francis, publishers already taking part in the duplicate submission tool pilot include IEEE, IOP Publishing, ACS Publications, Sage, and PeerJ.