Publication Integrity Checking – Is it necessary?

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A topic being discussed with increasing regularity in the scientific literature is whether scholarly authors need to start personally assessing the publication integrity of the papers that they cite in their research, similarly to how they currently take steps to assess the risk of bias of individual studies being considered for inclusion in their research syntheses.

A team from New Zealand and the United Kingdom have been researching this issue for a while now, with their latest commentary piece appearing in the August 2024 issue of Nature:

  • Grey A, Avenell A, Klein AA, Byrne JA, Wilmshurst P, Bolland MJ. Stop just paying lip service on publication integrity. Nature. 2024 Aug;632(8023):26-28. doi: 10.1038/d41586-024-02449-8. PMID: 39075213.
  • Bolland, M. J., Avenell, A., & Grey, A. (2024). Publication integrity: what is it, why does it matter, how it is safeguarded and how could we do better? Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/03036758.2024.2325004
  • Avenell, A., Bolland, M. J., Gamble, G. D., & Grey, A. (2022). A randomized trial alerting authors, with or without coauthors or editors, that research they cited in systematic reviews and guidelines has been retracted. Accountability in Research, 31(1), 14–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2022.2082290
  • Bolland MJ, Grey A, Avenell A, Klein AA. Correcting the scientific record – A broken system? Account Res. 2021 Jul;28(5):265-279. doi: 10.1080/08989621.2020.1852938. Epub 2020 Dec 8. PMID: 33205666.

This group clearly thinks publication integrity checking is necessary, even introducing “The ‘REAPPRAISED’ checklist for evaluation of publication integrity” in an earlier Nature comment, see:

  • Grey A, Bolland MJ, Avenell A, Klein AA, Gunsalus CK. Check for publication integrity before misconduct. Nature. 2020 Jan;577(7789):167-169. doi: 10.1038/d41586-019-03959-6. PMID: 31911697.

    Tip: A PDF version of THE ‘REAPPRAISED’ CHECKLIST FOR EVALUATION OF PUBLICATION INTEGRITY is available for download.

As there is of yet no consensus on which checklist tool is best, other groups have made similar attempts to create a research publication integrity assessment tool, for example:

See details of their RIA tool in:

  •  Figure 1 – PMC (nih.gov) – Hierarchical work flow and decision tree of the Research Integrity Assessment (RIA) tool.
  • Table 1 – PMC (nih.gov) – Critical and important criteria for a Research Integrity Assessment (RIA) of RCTs investigating IMPs for evidence syntheses.

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