"For centuries, academic publishing has operated on a basis of trust, with an implicit assumption that individuals interacting with an academic journal do so in good faith and within established norms and practices. This high degree of trust means that researchers typically are not required to prove their identity or good intentions when they submit a paper for publication, act as peer-reviewer, or join an editorial board.
...Recent cases of mass retractions attributed to fraudulence, and a growing number of research integrity issues in academic publishing more generally, illustrate that this trust is increasingly vulnerable to exploitation...As a consequence, there is now a gap between the level of trust that editorial systems need and the level that researchers can easily provide."
From the introduction to Trusted Identity in Academic Publishing
Confirming the identity of everyone involved in the editorial process crucial for preventing misconduct and fraud in the scholarly publishing process. Establishing accurate digital identities helps to ensure authenticity and accountability, supports accurate attribution and reward, assists in preventing duplicate submission, and promotes trust in the research record. The use of trust markers for researchers and other stakeholders in the scholarly publishing is an important method for combating identity fraud.
However, building reliable systems for confirming digital identities is a far from simple task. Making systems robust enough to catch would-be bad actors, but flexible enough to allow good actors to submit their manuscripts and participate in the editorial process presents substantial challenges that call for a nuanced and thoughful approach.
In this connection, STM Solutions, a division of the non-profit International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers, that works collectively across the scholarly publishing enterprise to develop tools and protocols for all its stakeholders convened a working group to explore the issues and challenges surrounding the creation of infrastructures for introducing trust markers for verifying digital identity. Their draft report entitled Trusted Identity in Academic Publishing, has now been published.
Akabana Consulting was delighted to have been asked join the working group and to contribute to the recently published draft report. We are very happy to to have been able to join such an outstanding group of research integrity experts to consider this very important issue. We commend the findings of the working group to our readers and clients.
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