Decontamination of the scientific literature

TL;DR

This paper discusses the pervasive issue of misconduct and errors contaminating scientific literature and proposes strategies to identify, prevent, and remediate these problems to ensure integrity.

Contribution

It introduces a framework for decontaminating scientific literature through detection, prevention, and corrective measures against misconduct and errors.

Findings

Many flawed papers pass peer review unnoticed

Current publishers have accepted hundreds of problematic papers

Proposed actions aim to improve literature integrity

Abstract

Research misconduct and frauds pollute the scientific literature. Honest errors and malevolent data fabrication, image manipulation, journal hijacking, and plagiarism passed peer review unnoticed. Problematic papers deceive readers, authors citing them, and AI-powered literature-based discovery. Flagship publishers accepted hundreds flawed papers despite claiming to enforce peer review. This application ambitions to decontaminate the scientific literature using curative and preventive actions.