We’re proud of the strong reputation of our journals – we’re often told that our papers ‘stand the test of time’. This requires significant time, effort and investment – so many thanks to our teams and our partners for all their work on this front. 10/10

And our long-standing relationship with @proofigai.bsky.social has been crucial in identifying potentially inappropriate duplication or manipulation of images. 9/10

The ClearSkies Oversight tool (@clearskiesadam.bsky.social) and the STM Integrity Hub (@stmassoc.bsky.social) help us detect potential papermill submissions, while iThenticate screens all our papers for possible plagiarism issues. 8/10

But given the increasing sophistication of fraudulent activities, we’re also reliant on technology partners to support us in these efforts… 7/10

And thanks also to the readers who raise concerns with us about published papers – while the vast majority of papers we publish are rigorous and ethically sound, things can slip through the net and we’re grateful when we’re alerted to these. 6/10

This fantastic team has years of experience in handling potential integrity cases raised at all stages of the publication lifecycle – identifying and analysing potential problems and liaising with authors and, where necessary, institutions to resolve them. 5/10

First – the people… Many thanks to our editors and reviewers, who frequently highlight potential problems with papers under consideration. These can then be assessed in detail by our dedicated publication integrity team. 4/10

Detecting and resolving these problems requires a combination of people and technology, working at multiple points during the publication (and post-publication) process. 3/10

Integrity issues have always been around – authorship disputes, data manipulation, plagiarism and so on – but have been amplified in recent years by the rise of papermills, and now aided by inappropriate use of AI. 2/10