Research integrity in the age of innovation and technology: a conversation with Laura Etchells

Interview with Laura Etchells, Head of Research Integrity

With a changing author-centric landscape, and a significant emphasis on research integrity, peer review and its role in academic publishing are often in the headlines.

Add in the evolution of new technologies, such as AI, the increase in predatory publishing and the challenging workloads of the academic community, upholding academic standards amidst prevalent scepticism is a challenge.

At Emerald Publishing, peer reviewing is a crucial component in maintaining the integrity of the research we publish. So, we sat down with Emerald’s Head of Research Integrity, Laura Etchells, to discuss the current state of play, the challenges that lie ahead and what we’re putting in place to help shape the future role of peer review.

Q&A

Q: Research integrity is fundamental to the advancement of knowledge and therefore plays a crucial role in scholarly publishing. What do you see are the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead for you and your team?

Laura Etchells: Innovation in technology is both an opportunity for research integrity, and a challenge. There is no doubt that technology will play an important role in the future of research integrity, enabling manuscript checks and due diligence to be completed efficiently, and ensuring our expert editors and reviewers are channelling their expertise into the subject matter review and not spending their valuable time completing research integrity checks.

The challenge is making sure that technology keeps pace; with AI usage becoming increasingly more difficult to spot, our challenge is ensuring research integrity tools stay up to date with the ever-changing landscape of research integrity problems. This is a whole sector problem and requires a whole-sector response to tackling this, which is why we are part of the STM Research Integrity Hub which aims to bring publishers together to work towards solutions in unison.

Q: The peer review process is essential for maintaining the quality and credibility of academic research yet often faces many criticisms and challenges. What would you say to someone who is sceptical of the process and the implications of not having a rigorous peer review process in place?

Laura: Peer review, in some form, is an established process that has been in place for centuries; however, the modern review process we know today – two double anonymous peer reviews for each research paper – is comparatively recent, having been formally established in the 20th Century. The double anonymous peer review process is the method adopted by most traditional scholarly journals; however, this does not mean it is a faultless system. Trust is a key pillar of scholarly research, and most recently the trust in the peer review process has been eroded with the rise of fake or compromised peer reviews.

Our submission system and peer review editorial teams monitor the peer review process to ensure our authors’ research goes through a rigorous process of peer review to improve and refine their publications. We’ve experimented in the past with alternative peer review models (open peer review for example), and we keep an open mind on experimentation. Ultimately it comes down to ensuring our research has gone through rigorous, challenging and constructive peer feedback to ensure the utmost trust in the quality of research being published.

Q: The theme for Peer Review Week 2024 explores the intersection of innovation and technology in peer review. What changes do you foresee in the peer review process over the next decade both within the industry but also specifically to Emerald?

Laura: There are elements of the peer review process that are being stretched to unsustainable levels. Editors regularly report that finding reviewers is becoming increasingly more difficult; with increases in submissions year-on-year and reviewer pools that are not growing by the same amount, the demand for peer review is outstripping supply.

At Emerald, we’re assessing our ways of working to support editors and reviewers, to ensure their skills are focussing on the research and not research integrity; our in-house peer review teams provide support to editors and reviewers to navigate the peer review process. We believe technology will play an integral part to this and we envision a future where technology will work alongside human verification to support robust peer review, ensuring not only trustworthy research, but high-quality publications that have been challenged and improved by high-quality peer review.

Q: How is Emerald currently addressing the added complexity of AI in the peer review and research integrity process?

Laura: AI is both a challenge and an opportunity to peer review. As mentioned above, there are opportunities for AI to assist with the workload of reviewers, but we need to ensure it is easing the workload and not adding to it. To address how we’re navigating the challenge of AI generated content, we’ve recently updated our policy around AI tools in content creation and peer review. To maintain trust in the integrity of published work, we do not permit the use of AI tools or Large Language Models to assist in the review or decision-making process of any part of a peer reviewed work.

The opportunity, however, is that we can responsibly use AI to our advantage, to help detect malpractice, fake research and papermill content. This area will continue to evolve at pace within the sector, and we will monitor these developments and adapt as necessary to reflect industry best practice standards so that our publications remain committed to high-quality, trusted academic content, and that our practices and workflows remain transparent for our authors and readers.

Q: Emerald’s mission is to publish research that has real world impact by creating an equitable research and publishing environment where all voices are represented and heard. How does research integrity play a part in achieving this?

Laura: Equity is a core part of research integrity; we believe that research is more impactful when a diverse range of voices are included, and a key pillar of our role as a research integrity team is to create, monitor and maintain the structures that allows research to be published regardless of external factors. As members of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), we act in accordance with their principles, which sets out guidelines to support and educate all those involved in publication ethics.

Publishing ethics issues are always treated fairly and objectively, following evidence, and our efforts to support equity in the research landscape is a shared vision with our publishing and peer review teams. We also understand that equity in research is a multi-stakeholder effort, and publishers need to work in harmony with other institutions in the scholarly landscape.

Trust is so important, and this is why in 2022 we re-launched our Real Impact manifesto, outlining 6 commitments that we believe are needed to achieve a fairer, more equitable environment, where research can have a real-world impact and those within it can reach their full potential. We know we need to change and adapt but maintaining the integrity of the research we publish will always remain a high priority.
 

Whether you’re an established reviewer or looking to start your reviewer journey, we’ve collated a number of resources, guides, perspectives, articles and blogs from different contributors, all available for you to read and share.

Find out more on our For reviewers page