Among many threads brought together in the first-ever Forensic Scientometrics (FoSci) Report is the macro-level analysis that looks into structural problems plaguing the research ecosystem: from interference by companies and governments, to legal threats against research sleuths, and the erosion of provenance and trust at a systemic level.
Although a bulk of the report is dedicated to infractions at a more individual or “lower”-systemic level, e-g., paper mills, tortured phrases, citation cartels, image fraud, etc., one of the report’s central arguments is that isolated infractions are rarely isolated. A retracted image, a single undisclosed conflict of interest, a suspicious co-authorship pattern – these lapses are often the symptoms of something more coordinated. And at the macro level, that “something” increasingly intersects with research security: the space where academic openness meets geopolitical risk.
Three vectors, one problem
Dr Leslie McIntosh, one of the authors of the FoSci report and Digital Science’s VP of Research Integrity & Security, has written a piece that parses out foreign (and domestic) interference into three mechanisms – and the pattern is the same each time. What looks like an integrity issue on the surface in many cases might signal a security issue underneath.
Deception: concealing true affiliations to gain access to funding, data, or research networks. In her piece, McIntosh points to a real US Department of Justice case: a university researcher sentenced to prison for lying on federal grant applications, concealing participation in a foreign talent-recruitment program while directing millions of dollars in US grants toward building expertise for another state. He had also had a paper retracted for image manipulation. A researcher with an undisclosed affiliation, led to two failures, one on the integrity front and the other on the security front. But no single office was positioned to catch them.
Discrediting: coordinated campaigns, including AI-generated deepfakes, designed to destroy a researcher’s or institution’s credibility, often timed to disqualify them from funding.
Coercion: legal intimidation (SLAPP suits), removal demands on published work, and the quieter pressure that pushes researchers away from sensitive topics entirely.
Each vector does double duty: it pollutes the scholarly record and it compromises institutional security. They are not two problems that occasionally overlap; they’re the same conflict, viewed from two different desks.
Making a case for the RIO and RSO desks to talk
Research Integrity Officers (RIOs) are trained to handle misconduct that is intentional and individual; it could be a fabricated dataset or a plagiarized paragraph. Research Security Officers (RSOs), on the other hand, are trained to flag restricted entities and undisclosed foreign funding. Interference-driven cases do not respect that division. A researcher deceived or pressured into a partnership they did not fully understand is not clearly a “misconduct” case or a “security” case: they’re both, simultaneously. This is the gap that can and is being exploited.
Where that capacity actually lives
Dimensions Research Security is built to close this gap for academic institutions. It replaces the manual, disconnected checks that RIOs and RSOs currently run in parallel with a single, repeatable workflow: enriched researcher profiles that cross-reference affiliation, funding, publication, patent, and grant data; configurable criteria to flag concerning ties before they reach a funding decision; a shared review queue so integrity and security reviews stop happening in separate silos; and audit-ready reporting that gives both offices, and the leadership above them, the same evidence trail.
The FoSci Report’s macro-level thread makes a simple point with uncomfortable implications: the tools to see this coming largely exist, but most institutions aren’t yet organized to use them together. Closing that gap is no longer a compliance checkbox, it could well be the difference between catching a deception case at the application stage and catching it after a DOJ press release.
Curious about what a unified integrity-and-security review workflow looks like for your institution? Contact the Dimensions team to request a demo.
Also, stay tuned for information about an upcoming webinar related to research security.