Research Integrity Tools

Researching and distributing research findings via publication and other means has always been rigorous. When the internet gained widespread use, more voices and languages joined the conversation. The challenge is that each researcher may call their area of expertise something different and use different names for the items studied and the results. Sometimes the renaming is useful to establish a “community of practice” and sometimes it is to try to keep up with the ever changing trendy handle placed on a concept. For example, we recently came up with a list of 57 synonyms for “homeless”, then the next week a new term was coined and they became the “unhoused”.

How is research able to proceed when the body of knowledge is called so many different things? In English, one type of breast cancer can be “Invasive breast cancer”, “Metastic breast cancer”, or “Stage IV breast cancer”. These three terms all refer to the same kind of cancer and in order to retrieve all the documents that use different names, the researcher must perform a search for each term to find a comprehensive answer to a query. Without a full set of results for homelessness or breast cancer, when the sources of information are fragmented, the solutions are harder to research and implement. What if everyone used the same words
 or if there was a way to search for the concept without worrying about which name is the right name?

Research Integrity Tools provide the scientific, consensus agreed, authoritative name for publication. There are several options, and some individual sources are described below.

Implementation of these tools is done via a simple API call to the server. The correct name is provided based on the input text and the input text does not need to be the “right” name. The author may then adopt the specific authoritative name for publication. There are many such lists in the Research Integrity Tool.

  • Semantic enrichment supports metadata and search
  • Time savings for researchers both authors and readers
  • Supports more accurate and in-depth research
  • It allows the disambiguated information in the formation of a platform for better science
  • Better communication between researchers worldwide – removes misidentification
  • Being able to reference a widely available authoritative source is crucial to all world health
  • Enhance scholarly and learned publishing and the research communities it represents worldwide

Medical Plant Names Service, from the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, lists over 34,000 Medicinal Plants with an average of 16.7 synonyms per entry. The Research Integrity Tool set provides the search function to find the preferred name in full text and suggest it to the author or searcher on submission. A link to the MPNS is also provided so more information on the plant can be accessed. Knowing the right name and the actual use makes the use of medicinal plants safer and more efficient. MPNS includes all known scientific names, common names, homonyms, and more.

The MPNS provides global coverage and is not just regional which is important an integrated world. MPNS is constantly updated and linked to the Kew International Plants Names Database.Suspect Science Filter

Are there areas of science or research that are not appropriate for your publication? Suspect science is research that is considered unreliable or potentially flawed due to issues like poor methodology, biased data interpretation, conflicts of interest, or outright fabrication. This is a filter to detect topics which require a closer look by acquisitions editors before sending out to potential peer reviewers. The system identifies questionable articles and flags them for a cursory review before putting them into the publishing pipeline. Using the suspect science filter saves time in acquisitions review.

TaxoGene

The over 22,300 human genes listed by the National Center for Biomedical Ontology include an average of 19 synonyms per gene name. Directing all readers to the preferred name in either search or publication allows for full retrieval recall of related material, ensures precision in search, and removes ambiguity in communication. The Research Integrity Tool finds the names used in the publication and suggests the preferred form for adoption into the publication.

Bad Cell Lines

Two organizations keep track of contaminated biological cell lines, the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and IRDiRC. There are 488 from ICLAC and 757 from the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB).

Don’t let your authors and researchers work with known bad data. As of this writing, over 32,000 papers have been published based on work on bad or contaminated cells. Further, these papers have been cited by at least 500,000 more articles, perpetuating bad science. Use this tool to quickly verify that the cell lines used are valid and not from a contaminated line. Research Integrity Tools combined these resources into a single platform to find the cell names and alert researchers to potential problems.

Access Integrity Medical Coding

Originally created to record the coding needed to submit claims from patient encounters and medical health records, these code sets can now be used to enhance other medical information. Medical Claims Compliance depends on the International Classification of Diseases ICD-10 coding for submission to payment systems. It can also be used to insure that forthcoming publications or online searches find the appropriate World Health Organization and Center for Medicare Services codes.

In addition to ICD-10 there are two widely applied systems from the American Medical Association: CPT and HCPCS codes.

All Access Integrity code bases provide accurate, deep, and consistent coding making medical billing and publishing efficient. Based on the patient encounter, physician’s notes, or publications, tagging using these codes is the most efficient way to ensure compliance at all levels.

In partnership with Highwire