Category Archives: Resource Highlights

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OpenAlex (free and open catalog of the global research system)

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A couple of years ago now – a free, openly-available bibliographic search tool called OpenAlex came onto the scholarly research scene and was quickly embraced by researchers worldwide who were upset by the news of Microsoft’s decision to discontinue Microsoft Academic Graph (MAG) at the end of 2021.

Find out more about OpenAlex by reviewing these resources:

Since 2022, OpenAlex has become harder and harder to ignore. In 2024, there’s been several papers exploring its usefulness in bibliometrics and how it compares to its proprietary/commercial competitors, Scopus (Elsevier) and Web of Science (Clarivate).

For example:

Interestingly, however, researchers are also beginning to explore its usefulness in systematic review literature searching methodology. Most notably, a free systematic review project management tool called EPPI-Reviewer “has integrated access to over 200 million OA bibliographic records of research articles, connected in a large network graph of concept & citation relationships: the OpenAlex dataset – updated regularly. See here for further information.” (From: https://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/Default.aspx?alias=eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/er4; EPPI-Reviewer is developed and maintained by the EPPI Centre – the Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Co-ordinating Centre (EPPI Centre) – which is part of the Social Science Research Unit at the Institute of Education, University of London.) 

Not surprisingly, published systematic reviews that include OpenAlex as one of the sources searched are slowly beginning to appear. For example:

The MSK Library’s Systematic Review Service team keeps on top of new resources being used by authors across the globe – like OpenAlex – and other potentially relevant changes in evidence synthesis practice. Feel free to Ask Us whenever you come across a database or web resource that is unfamiliar to you when reading a systematic review!

Papermill Detection Software

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It is not at all surprising in this era of “fake” everything, that there would suddenly be a business need for “fake paper” detection tools. Along with “plagiarism detection” and “image duplication or image manipulation detection”, another potential risk to the integrity of the scientific record that many publishers are now proactively on the lookout for during the manuscript submission process is “papermill detection”.  

According to this COPE blog post on “Potential paper mills“:

“This term describes the process by which manufactured manuscripts are submitted to a journal for a fee on behalf of researchers with the purpose of providing an easy publication for them, or to offer authorship for sale. The concerns with these submissions include faked or manipulated data/images, the use of stock images, substantial authorship changes, and plagiarism, which is not detected because it comes from a translated version of another article.” 

Publishers are already starting to incorporate these tools into their workflows. For example, a year ago, in April 2023, the STM Scientific Integrity hub (that provides tools/services for publishers in a cloud-based environment) launched their papermill detection tool as a:

“stand-alone application that allows publishers to automatically screen uploaded papers against key indicators that suggest that the manuscript has or may have originated from a paper mill”.

This year, in March 2024, Wiley announced that its journals will soon be piloting an “AI-powered Papermill Detection Service” integrated in their manuscript submission system.

Tools like “Papermill Alarm” have been reported on in the literature as far back as 2022:

Else H. ‘Papermill alarm’ software flags potentially fake papers. Nature. 2022 Sep 23. doi: 10.1038/d41586-022-02997-x. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 36151206. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02997-x

Although this type of detection is not something that individual authors would need to use pre-emptively, other tools  – like iThenticate, a plagiarism detection tool – are now being subscribed to and made available to all potential authors in the MSK community via the MSK Library.

Questions? Be sure to Ask Us at the MSK Library!

An Article DOI is Not Proof of Digital Preservation

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A March 2024 Nature paper entitled “More than 2 million research papers have disappeared from the Internet” shed some much needed light on the fact that just because an article is published in a journal that assigns DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers), authors should NOT automatically assume that this publisher is also taking the needed measures to ensure that the digital content (that its DOIs are pointing to) is being preserved.

And journal content that is not digitally preserved can – and has, as per these articles – gone missing from the Internet:

Learn more about how to ensure that your publications are digitally archived for posterity so that they never disappear from the Internet.

Questions? Ask Us at the MSK Library!