The system ' developed by Institute of Physics Publishing (IOPP), based in Bristol, UK ' can help to uncover cases of plagiarized or template-like peer reviews, which individuals or organized groups use to push manuscripts through the publication process or boost citations to their own work. The technology aims to 'combat this pressing issue', said Lauren Flintoft, the IOPP's research integrity manager, who presented the findings of a pilot study testing the tool at the 9th World Conference on Research Integrity in Vancouver, Canada on 4 May. Most integrity checks focus on manuscripts, but 'peer-review process fraud is equally as important and targeted probably more often than you think by bad actors', Flintoft told the meeting. In an analysis of around half a million peer-review reports for manuscripts submitted to the IOPP between 2020 and 2025, the AI tool identified nearly 2,500 reports that had at least 60% overlap with former reviewer reports, of which 785 reports had at least...
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