Supporters of research integrity have signed a new declaration calling for data-driven forensics – known as Forensic Scientometrics (FoSci) – to lead the charge in detecting, exposing and even preventing fake science. The Forensic Scientometrics (FoSci) Paris Declaration was drafted during an event in Paris last week organized and run by Digital Science’s VP of Research Integrity, Dr Leslie McIntosh.
As the Declaration states, "Trustworthy science risks being obscured by a small but growing corpus of papers, people, organizations, and potentially governments polluting the integrity of research". The problems currently researched by forensic scientometricians include: author misrepresentation, data manipulation, fake conferences, image duplication, misconduct (including fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism), papermill operations, questionable research practices, sale of authorship and citations, sneaked references, stealth corrections, and tortured phrases.
