Dual partnership boosts fraud‑detection capabilities in AIRA, safeguarding the integrity of Frontiers articles

Frontiers announced today that external industry‑leading fraud‑screening tools – Cactus Communications’ Paperpal Preflight and Clear Skies’ Papermill Alarm and Oversight – have been integrated into its own Artificial Intelligence Review Assistant (AIRA) submission-screening system. The expansion delivers an unprecedented, multilayered defense against organized research fraud, strengthening the reliability and integrity of every manuscript submitted to Frontiers. 

Commitment to integrity and building on AIRA’s seven‑year legacy 

At Frontiers, research integrity is the first priority. More than 50 research integrity experts together with AIRA apply tight quality controls to every submission, before, during, and after peer review. 

Since its launch in 2018, AIRA has supported the Frontiers Research Integrity Team in maintaining quality and integrity at scale, making Frontiers one of the early adopters of AI in submission checking. In 2022, Frontiers added its own papermill check to its comprehensive catalogue of AIRA checks, which aims to tackle the industry-wide problem of manufactured manuscripts. This is part of the routine updates to AIRA, released regularly as additional industry insights into papermill operations have become available. The latest version, released in 2025, uses more than 15 data points and signals of potential manufactured manuscripts to be investigated and validated by a human expert. 

Frontiers is committed to leading the field in research integrity by deploying the most advanced and effective tools working on all submissions; for this reason, the open-access publisher is now partnering with two industry-leading providers on problematic content detection, with their tools directly integrated into the team’s standard operating procedures. The addition of Cactus and Clear Skies checks into AIRA marks the next phase of Frontiers’ integrity roadmap, which also includes enhanced reference and citation checks and authorship validation checks scheduled for release later this year. 

Dr Elena Vicario, Head of Research Integrity at Frontiers, said: 

“Maintaining trust in the scholarly record demands constant innovation. By combining the unique strengths of Clear Skies and Cactus with our own AI capabilities, we are raising the bar for integrity screening and giving editors and reviewers the confidence that every submission has been rigorously vetted.” 

Commenting on the importance of the partnership, Nikesh Gosalia, President, Global Academic and Publisher Relations at Cactus Communications, said:  

“This partnership with Frontiers reflects the confidence leading publishers have in our AI-driven solutions. Paperpal Preflight is a vital tool that supports editorial teams and existing homegrown solutions in identifying and addressing potential issues early in the publishing workflow. As one of the world’s largest and most impactful research publishers, Frontiers is taking an important step in strengthening research integrity, and we are proud to collaborate with them in this mission of safeguarding research.” 

Adam Day, Founder and CEO of Clear Skies, added: 

“Clear Skies is thrilled to be working with the innovative team at Frontiers to integrate AIRA with Oversight. This integration makes our multi-award-winning services, including the Papermill Alarm, available across the Frontiers portfolio. Oversight is the first index of research integrity and recipient of the inaugural EPIC Award for integrity tools from the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP). As well as providing strategic Oversight to publishers, our detailed article reports support human Oversight of research integrity investigations on publications as well as journal submissions.” 

About Frontiers 

Frontiers is a leading research publisher. Our role is to provide the world’s scientists with a rigorous and efficient publishing experience. Scientists empower society and our mission is to accelerate collaboration and discovery by making science open – enabling researchers to find the solutions we all need for healthy lives on a healthy planet. Powered by custom-built technology, artificial intelligence, and a collaborative peer review, our community journals give experts in more than 1,800 academic fields an open access platform to publish high quality, high impact research. Through our outreach work to build strong partnerships with business, policymakers, and educators, we’re leading the transition to open science. 

About Clear Skies 

Launched in early 2022, Clear Skies brought novel tools to market for assessing and modeling the peer-review process including the Clear Skies Article Tracker. Clear Skies created the Papermill Alarm, the first service dedicated to detecting organized research fraud. The Papermill Alarm won the 2024 ALPSP award for innovation in publishing. For more information, please visit: clear-skies.co.uk 

About Cactus Communications 

Established in 2002, Cactus Communications (cactusglobal.com) is a leading technology company that specializes in expert services and AI-driven products which improve how research gets funded, published, communicated, and discovered. Its flagship brand Editage offers a comprehensive suite of researcher solutions, including expert services and cutting-edge AI products like Paperpal, R Discovery, and Mind the Graph.