The CHORUS Forum on Trust and Integrity, moderated by Scott Delman, Director of Publications at the Association for Computing Machinery, focused on challenges to trust in scholarly publishing and the role of AI in research misconduct. Speakers addressed threats, opportunities, and potential solutions through policies, guidelines, and technology.
Jigisha Patel, Independent Research Integrity Specialist, highlighted three major threats to publication integrity:
• Paper mills exploiting the publication process for financial gain.
• The widespread use of AI tools, which makes it easier to generate manuscripts and harder to distinguish genuine from fabricated content.
• Innocent authors being affected by retractions due to inadvertent association with paper mills or reliance on AI‑generated material.
She emphasized the need for collaboration among publishers, institutions, and researchers to raise awareness of paper mills and promote ethical use of AI tools. Patel noted that organizations such as COPE and STM are working together to develop policies supporting research integrity.
Joris Van Rossum, Program Director at STM Solutions, discussed technological responses to integrity challenges. He explained that larger research communities, pressure to publish, and new technologies such as AI pose risks to trust in science. Publishers have responded by creating integrity teams, adopting advanced screening technologies, and collaborating on shared infrastructures. However, he observed that current detection methods for AI‑generated content remain limited, and broader collaboration is needed to establish authenticity beyond the manuscript level.
David Sholl, Executive Vice President for Research at Rice University, provided an institutional perspective, noting the difficulty of maintaining integrity across large volumes of publications and diverse research practices. As editor‑in‑chief of the AIChE Journal, he underscored the importance of rigorous peer review and data sharing. He described a pilot study requiring authors to include numerical data for figures, aimed at improving transparency and reproducibility.
The session concluded with a Q&A that addressed:
• Challenges of AI‑generated plagiarism and the role of reviewers.
• The importance of education and awareness in fostering integrity.
• Collaboration between institutions and publishers, including processes for whistleblowing.
• The need for high‑quality journals and stronger publishing practices.
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