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The COVID-19 pandemic and continuing evolution of climate change has witnessed a seeming explosion of junk papers making misleading or false claims, frequently aimed at undercutting the benefits of vaccines or denying the link between the burning of fossil fuels and climate change. Now, Scitility, a new technology company, has launched its Argos website that rates papers based on their authors’ publication records, whether the papers cite retracted research, among other variables.
On October 22, Nature reported:
The science-integrity website Argos, which was launched in September by Scitility, a technology firm headquartered in Sparks, Nevada, gives papers a risk score on the basis of their authors’ publication records, and on whether the paper heavily cites already-retracted research. A paper categorized as ‘high risk’ might have multiple authors whose other studies have been retracted for reasons related to misconduct, for example. Having a high score doesn’t prove that a paper is low quality, but suggests that it is worth investigating… Argos, which is offering free accounts to individuals and fuller access to science-integrity sleuths and journalists, is the first to show public insights…
By early October, Argos had flagged more than 40,000 high-risk and 180,000 medium-risk papers. It has also indexed more than 50,000 retracted papers.
Part of a screen from Argos illustrating high risk articles and retractions by publisher