Pioneering duplication detector trawls thousands of coronavirus preprints

Pioneering duplication detector trawls thousands of coronavirus preprints

Duplication detector trawls preprints

Daniel Acuna, a computer scientist who develops automated programs to spot duplicate images in research papers, has applied his system to 3,500 COVID-19 preprints from the bioRxiv and medRxiv servers. In 4 hours, Acuna says, the software picked up around 400 instances of potentially duplicated images. Most turned out not to be problematic, says Acuna, but he selected 24 papers that he publicly flagged as having “interesting” duplicate images. The move raised some eyebrows, with Acuna and other scientists emphasizing that the software’s finds always need to be reviewed by a human.
Nature | 5 min read