Harnessing AI to power research integrity: A new tool for journal editors

Author: Deidre Hudson Reuss

Senior Marketing Manager

Springer Nature’s journal editors are getting a new, AI-powered tool that gives them the power to quickly and easily identify and remove unsound submissions. It works by finding fundamental flaws that make these submissions unsuitable for publication. So that, without much time or effort, editors can stop these submissions from clogging the review pipeline; and that means more capacity and efficiency for submissions that ought to be reviewed (and published when they pass review). 

Springer Nature built this tool in-house as an integrated part of SNAPP, Springer Nature’s next generation article submission and processing platform. We’re currently testing the tool — together with some of our editors — on 100+ open access (OA) journals, including Scientific Reports, which represents close to 100,000 submissions in 2024. Once these journals’ editors have evaluated this tool, it will join the two other AI quality tools Springer Nature deployed last year, SnappShot (for images) and Geppetto (for identifying paper mill-generated submissions) as available to all journals on SNAPP.

The new tool helps editors check 14 different aspects of submission suitability, including data availability, human and animal ethics, clinical trials and misuse threats, and more. And even though an expert human is always involved at every step, still, this tool helps to quickly remove unsound submissions from the review pipeline.

“Publishing trusted research is at the heart of what we do. As the volume of research increases, we are excited to see how we can best use AI to support our authors, editors and peer reviewers, simplifying their ways of working whilst upholding quality. By carefully introducing new ways of checking papers to enhance research integrity and support editorial decision-making we can help speed up everyday tasks for researchers, freeing them up to concentrate on what matters to them — conducting research.”  

- Harsh Jegadeesan, Chief Publishing Officer, Springer Nature

Supporting Springer Nature’s commitment to research integrity

These — now three — AI-powered tools help Springer Nature’s editors safeguard the scholarly record. Developing this tool marks a new phase in Springer Nature’s ongoing mission to build technologies that improve both the publishing experience and publishing efficiency for authors, editors, and reviewers. And as always, every new AI tool we develop is in line with our established Artificial Intelligence (AI) Principles. You can also read more detail about Springer Nature’s approach to AI and how we use it within our communities.

Springer Nature’s Research Integrity hub has more information — and detail — on the company’s ongoing efforts.