Check Integrity

ROLE: Lead UX Designer

TIMELINE: Fall 2023–Spring 2025

BACKGROUND

Mass retractions of peer-reviewed research articles are increasingly common. This is a public relations nightmare for business, but the negative impacts on research and researchers mean often irreversible damage for all users and consumers of fact-based science. Everyone suffers. Catching fraudulent manuscripts & data, as well as bad actors exploiting loopholes in the process is mission critical.

My Trust & Transparency squad within Submissions was tasked with building a product to help remove these papers from the pipeline before publication.

CHALLENGES

• Elsevier journals use the legacy platform Editorial Manager (EM). It is the most-widely used submissions software in the industry. Just as the name suggests, its initial purpose was for editors to manage journal submissions. It also lacks modularity and protecting research integrity against the modern-day threats was simply not something even fathomed let alone considered when this platform was developed at the turn of the century.

• Bad actors and fraudulent submissions are becoming more and more frequent, increasing editorial workloads — and editors are simultaneously pushed to publish more papers because this is the key driver of revenue under the Open Access publisher model.

• Ensuring editorial independence — Who watches the watchmen? What are the ethical implications of permitting a dedicated, publisher-wide Ethics team to make decisions on journal submissions?