Good reporting practice: suicide, intersectionality and the challenges of mass-produced science

Tuesday, 21 October 2025

Journal editors have dual roles: to prevent the publication of poor quality research, our gatekeeper function, and to ensure that the good quality research we publish is reported to the highest standards. This webinar featured three presentations that addressed different aspects of these roles.

The first, Reducing risk when publishing academic articles about suicide,  described good reporting practice for research on suicide based on media guidelines: a necessary development now that open access means anyone can read academic articles about suicide and self harm. The second described the Guidelines for Intersectional Analysis in Science and Technology (GIST), which aim to build on the successful SAGER guidelines. The final presentation covered the recent development of mass-produced science, facilitated by open data sets and AI writing tools.

Programme

1.Reducing risk when publishing academic articles about suicide

Research into suicide and self-harm is a fundamental part of better understanding these public health issues to inform effective preventative work and campaign activity.

With an increasing demand for open access there are some unique risks to be aware of when publishing papers relating to suicide. Strong and consistent international evidence, known as the Werther effect, has shown some types of media coverage can encourage imitational behaviour. Studies have also shown evidence of vulnerable individuals researching academic papers online, to learn about effective suicide methods. This presentation covered some of the important considerations for researchers.

2.Guidelines for Intersectional Analysis in Science and Technology (GIST)

Intersectionality describes interdependent systems of inequality related to sex, gender, race, age, class and other socio-political dimensions. By focusing on the compounded effects of social categories, intersectional analysis can enhance the accuracy and experimental efficiency of science. New Guidelines extend intersectional approaches that were predominantly developed in the humanities, social sciences and public health to the fields of natural science and technology, where this type of analysis is less established.

3. Integrity challenges from paper mills exploiting Open Science

The last three years have seen an explosion in published manuscripts analysing open-access health datasets, in many cases presenting misleading or biologically implausible findings. There is a growing evidence base to suggest that this is due in part to AI-assisted and formulaic workflows, with paper mills taking advantage of these innovative technologies to flood journals with low-quality, formulaic papers from datasets like NHANES, FAERS and the Global Burden of Disease Study. These submissions burden the editorial process and increase the risks of introducing false discoveries into the literature.

These submissions are difficult to detect because they use real data and sophisticated methods, with flaws like selective data usage difficult to detect without reproducing the complete workflow. Consequently, in a world where a paper can be generated in a few clicks, editorial evaluation must shift from the now-trivial aspects of how a study was conducted to the critical why, prioritizing scientific rationale and novelty.

To combat this, editors and peer reviewers will need resources to help them to recognise formulaic templates and identify abuse of Open Science resources. Additional checklists are another possibility, or making clear in author guidance that the journal discourages research based solely on retrospective health databases unless by invitation or where there is a clear unmet need, to force authors to justify their work. These measures increase the burden on unethical authors and provide grounds for rejection. In the long term, Open Science may need to evolve beyond unfettered access, perhaps requiring pre-registration to prevent misuse while preserving data as a public good.