A new study presented at the 10th Peer Review Congress in September 2025 suggests that authorship changes made after a paper is submitted to an academic journal may signal deeper integrity concerns.
While publishers and industry bodies have long viewed authorship changes as a potential warning sign for systematic manipulation, empirical evidence supporting this connection has been limited. The current investigation aimed to fill that gap by testing whether post-submission author alterations are associated with other problematic behaviors.
"We hypothesized that attempts to change article authorship after submission indicate further concerns," the researchers noted.
The findings, though preliminary, point to the utility of monitoring authorship changes as part of a broader strategy to safeguard research integrity. The study calls for further analysis to refine detection methods and improve the accuracy of these indicators.