For Peer Review Week 2020, we talk to Jana Christopher about her work in image integrity; a comprehensive service helping scientists and journals to protect and safeguard the published record.
Ensuring the integrity of images in literature is an important issue that affects authors and publishers across science. Some of the Royal Society journals such as Open Biology have introduced image screening as a routine part of the editorial process. This year’s theme for Peer Review Week is ‘Trust in Peer Review‘ and we took this opportunity to speak with image analyst Jana Christopher. Working with a number of publishers, incuding Royal Society Publishing and FEBS Press, Jana has the unique job of spotting anomalies in images prior to publication. We asked her to tell us more about her role and share her thoughts on how trust in review can be improved.
Examples of image aberrations:
Similarities spotted in articles originating from a paper mill:
Data removed with eraser tool – the black shapes at the bottom indicate use of an eraser tool:
Duplicated image:
Image credits: Open Biology
Read Open Biology’s editorial on Image Integrity and Standards
