Every year millions of scientific articles get published across journals, and a lot of journals have hired people to manually scan submitted manuscripts for numerous issues. Recently, London-based scientific journal Nature has observed at least four publishers have started automating the process in 2021 itself by using AI software to discover duplications and partial duplications before submissions are published.

“Since January 2021, the AACR has been using artificial intelligence (AI) software on all manuscripts it has provisionally accepted after peer review. The aim is to automatically alert editors to duplicated images, including those in which parts have been rotated, filtered, flipped or stretched,” reported Nature.

Last year, American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) started using artificial intelligence to check research papers with doctored images to curb fraud and inappropriate attempts to beautify findings. AACR used the AI software from Israeli firm Proofig. The move does not eliminate the need for professional editors to check when the software flags images. There are times when the need arises for images to be used twice with explanations, while there can be an error in simple copy-and-paste rather than frauds. 

However, now that AI has matured to the point where it is both effective and affordable, experts predict that a wave of automated image-checking assistants will sweep through the scientific publishing industry in the coming years, similar to how the software checks manuscripts for plagiarism became commonplace a decade ago. Several groups in the publishing industry have also stated that they are looking into techniques to compare images in papers across journals.

The trend is welcome, but the field is still in its nascent stage and calls for careful comparison of various software products in the market. Also, it may open opportunities for fraudsters to develop AI for producing deepfakes, which again necessitates careful observation ahead.